Tag Archive: 0fictitious imprints

As it’s Hallowe’en, it seemed an appropriate day to share this, one of the books I shall be exhibiting next week at the Boston book fair: It’s a copy of the rare first edition of a curious novel, narrated by the wandering spirit of a man who, in a nod to the opening lines of […]

Wikipedia calls Charles Théveneau de Morande (1741–1805) a gutter journalist, blackmailer, and spy. He was certainly ‘a large and charismatic man of great physical strength and presence, traits he used to bully and intimidate.  Having received an education in Arnay-le-Duc and Dijon, Morande joined the French army and was possibly wounded serving in the Seven […]

This is a copy of the first edition of Les amours de Mirtil (‘Constantinople’, but actually Paris, 1761), attributed variously to Fontenelle, Claude-Louis-Michel de Sacy (though he would have been only fifteen at the time), and Marc-Ferdinand Groubentall de Linière.  There was another edition the same year, also with a fictitious ‘Constantinople’ imprint, but unillustrated.  Cohen–de Ricci […]

Printed in Meaux, east of Paris (and presumably in limited numbers), this is a copy of the first edition of a rare little book of epigrams by Ange-Denis Maquin (1756–1823), a professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres who subsequently fled across the Channel during the Terror.  Settling at Hastings, ‘he began learning English and supported himself […]

This is a copy of the first edition in German of William Gilpin’s famous Essay on Prints, ‘published anonymously in 1768, which had influence on the Continent, [and] contained his earliest definition of the Picturesque’ (Grove Art).  The translation is by Johann Jakob Volckmann (1732–1803).  A former owner here has created an index of the […]

I had quite a bit of interest when I wrote about this book over on The New Antiquarian, so thought I’d share it here, too.  I’ve written before about a fictitious Boston imprint.  That book had no obvious connection with the United States, but this one does: it’s an early satire on emigration to America, from 1818. […]