[Rarebooks] fa: LINGUET: MEMOIRES SUR LA BASTILLE - Annales Politiques, Civiles, &c. - 1783

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 28. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/mts4e2jc

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Simon Nicolas Henri] Linguet: Annales Politiques, Civiles et Litteraires du Dix-huitieme Siecle. [Tome dixieme.] Londres [London]: de l'Imprimerie de T. Spilsbury, Snowhill, 1783. First edition, 8vo (20 cm) in early/period mottled calf with gilt-tooled spine; iv + 502 pp.; engraved frontispiece (by Spilsbury).

The first 160 pages comprise Linguet's "Memoires sur la Bastille, et la Detention de l'Auteur dans ce Château-Royal, depuis le 27 Septembre 1780, jusqu'au 19 Mai 1782." Having offended several notables in the royal court, including the duc de Duras, with his sarcastic literary attacks, Linguet was imprisoned in the Bastille for twenty months. Writing from the safety of exile in England, Linguet here protests his innocence and devotion to Louis XVI, attacks the notorious system of lettres de cachet by which he was arrested, and paints a melodramatic picture of life in the infamous prison. A disbarred lawyer turned gadfly journalist whose fame at one time surpassed that of Beaumarchais and even rivaled that of Voltaire, Simon Nicolas Henri Linguet (1736-1794) was above all a contrarian with an almost suicidal bent for offending the wrong people at the wrong time, monarchists and revolutionaries alike. Marie Antoinette was a staunch supporter, but her backing was a mixed blessing, to say the least, after 1789. He retired to Marnes in order to escape the Terror, but in 1794 his luck finally ran out and he was condemned as a royalist sympathizer and guillotined. His Annales were published periodically from 1777 to 1792, first in London, then Brussels, and finally in Paris.

The front paste-down bears the striking contemporary bookplate (partially abraded) of one La Forest, an ardent revolutionary we can assume, from its depiction of a cap of liberty on a pike, and presumably the owner who affixed the small MS subtitle ("Memoires sur la Bastille") to the title-page. The equally striking engraved frontispiece is accompanied by an "explication de l'estampe." Binding with bumping and wear to the corners, some abrasions and tears to the leather on the boards; contents with occasional very light toning, a few small stray spots and touches of light soiling, otherwise unusually clean, bright and fresh.