[Rarebooks] fa: GEORGE IV & QUEEN CAROLINE - RECIT DU PROCES PAR LE ROI CONTRE LA REINE 1820 (Ex-Libris A. M. BROADLEY - Notorious Uranian Barrister)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 8. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y9yuf8gx

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Recit Historique et Judiciaire du Proces intente, par le Roi d'Angleterre, contre la Reine. Par les auteurs de l'echo des Tribunes. Paris: chez les Marchands de Nouveautes, Juillet, 1820. Presumed first edition thus. Tall 8vo (22 cm) in early/period calf-backed marbled boards with gilt-lettered morocco spine label; [4] + 84 pp.; portrait frontispiece.

Unusual contemporary French history and analysis of the troubled marital history and ugly divorce proceedings of George IV of england and his consort Caroline. Binding with some wear to the corners and spine ends, light toning and a few occasional small spots to the leaves, else very clean and tight. Front paste-down with the armorial bookplate of Alexander Meyrick Broadley (1847-1916), who knew something of legal scandals himself. A. M. Broadley, aka "Broadley Pasha," was a gifted barrister with a knowledge of Islamic and Indian law, as well as a louche figure of Wildean notoriety in the edwardian era who was caricatured in Vanity Fair magazine. As a young man he had served as a reform-minded magistrate in India, but fled the subcontinent when a warrant was issued for his arrest for homosexual offenses. Later, when he was implicated in the Cleveland Street Affair, a scandal regarding a male brothel in London, no less a figure than edward, Prince of Wales, intervened to force Broadley into exile. After several years lounging about in Paris, Brussels, and Tunis with other "Uranian" expatriates, he returned to england, where he was involved in a shady financial scheme that resulted in a notorious bankruptcy court trial. His last years were lived quietly in his country house, The Knapp, in Bradpole, Dorset, where he spent much of his time collecting books and manuscripts, including "a large collection of works on criminal jurisprudence." After his death, much of his library ended up at the Bodleain and the Royal Society (see Wikipedia, etc.). His bookplate here reads, "ex-Libris The Knapp Bradpole," and bears the year 1895.