Considerations Sur Les Moeurs De Ce Siecle. DUCLOS (Charles).

CHARLES BUTLER'S COPY

Engraved frontispiece, title printed in red and black.

Fourth Edition. 12mo. [168 x 102 x 26 mm]. [4]ff, 437, [3] pp. Contemporary French binding of red goatskin, the covers with a gilt triple fillet border. The spine divided into six panels with raised bands and gilt triple fillet compartments, lettered in the second, the edges of the boards tooled with a gilt fillet, the turn-ins with gilt rolls, green silk endleaves, gilt edges.
Paris: chez Prault et Durand, 1764.

A fine copy.

First published in 1751. Duclos (1704-1772) was a leading intellectual, a contributor to the Encyclopédie and a member of the Académie des Inscriptions and the Académie Française. When Voltaire went to Prussia he succeeded to the post of royal historiographer.

This copy comes from the library of Charles Butler F.R.G.S., J.P., D.L. (1821-1910) of Warren Wood, Hatfield and Connaught Place, London. He seems to have bought it at Sotheby's ("S & W") on 21st February 1862, although there was no actual sale at Sotheby's that day - he may well have bought it a few days later. The catalogue clipping pasted in shows that is was lot 2016, and attributes the binding to "De Rome". It could well be by Derome, or another of the Parisian binders. Butler's enormous library was sold in a series of sales at Sotheby's in 1911-1917, when a booklabel was inserted. This was one of a small number of books retained by the family and it emerged in a sale in Yorkshire in 2018. De Ricci has some mildly disobliging things to say about Butler's collection, but he was elected a member of the Roxburghe Club in 1883, and I have only had good things from his library.

Stock no. ebc8056