London, Leipsic, and Amsterdam: H. Colburn and others, 1816. Original boards with cloth spine with paper label, untrimmed edges. pp (4), 168, [4] + short 12 pp Simpkin, Marshall catalogue. Preface by the German editor. Spine worn, missing pieces, label mostly readable; boards a little warped, worn at fore edges; text paper a bit cockled but quite clean and unworn, no stains, no owner marks. Some neat repairs to spine and joints. A scarce early attempt at image rehabilitation by Napoleon’s notorious Minister of Police. This "sketch" would be expanded into a two-volume autobiography in 1825. "[Fouché] commenced his career as a revolutionist; voted the death of the king; betrayed the Republic to Napoleon; broke his faith to the usurper, then to the Bourbons; then again to the hero of the Hundred Days; he was venal, mendacious, disloyal, corrupt to the core... His memoirs are indeed no less amazing than instructive reading, and in them will be found the history of the first Napoleonic Empire with a cynical frankness little less than revolting" (Daily Telegraph).

Edward and Charles Dilly, 1768. Second edition, first London edition, same year as the Glasgow first, with some minor authorial changes, variant that has Appendix listed in Contents at p. 141 instead of correctly at p. 241. pp (xxiv), 384 + folding frontispiece map; half-title present. Bound in contemporary half calf and marbled boards, spine with label and gilt rules. Spine has very shallow chip across head, slight rubbing, rippling to the shiny surface; cracked front inner hinge neatly repaired; tanning to corners of endpapers from binding materials; armorial bookplate (browned) of Robert Sherson, M.D., with his ink signature; crease to one fold of frontispiece, which has lightly offset onto the title page; VG otherwise, text fine. The young Boswell's first important publication, "with its reports of the gallant islanders and a Plutarchan depiction of [General Pascal] Paoli paralleled with several classical heroes, it was an immediate success. The work was widely read and translated, stimulated great interest in Paoli and the Corsican cause, brought its author wide fame in Britain and Europe, and found an interested readership among the Americans. It attracted the notice of the French government (which had a translation made), and though Boswell's ambition for British intervention was not to be fulfilled, he probably influenced Britain's decision to send secret supplies of arms to the Corsicans" - ODNB. ESTC T26158 ; Pottle 24; Tinker 322. Edition of 3.5k copies, published a month after the first.

Paris: Félix Bonnaire / Victor Magen, 1835. 21.5 cm. Old quarter calf and marbled boards, elaborately gilt-tooled spine with titling piece, marbled endpapers and page edges. (4), 420 pp, half-title present. Vicaire VI, 203. Boards with modest rubbing, joints professionally repaired, mild flaking to the gilt spine lettering, leaves with scattered foxing, most noticeably on the half-title and title leaves, in all a VG copy. Front pastedown with the engraved armorial bookplate of Ross Ambler Curran, early twentieth-century California society figure and bibliophile. An early novel by Sand, quite scarce in first edition. Written in Venice, it is the story of a tragic and unwise marriage between a young flower seller and a feckless nobleman. A proto-feminist work that paints a grim picture of the effects of marriage on a woman of intelligence and of marriage between people of different social classes.

London: Willioughby & Co. No date, later edition. c.1840s or 50s? Octavo, pp xxiv, 3-275, 1 blank, 8 ads, Original brown cloth decorated in blind to covers, pictorial spine stamped in gilt ("Illustrated Standard Edition...200 Engravings".) Cream endpapers, all edges gilt. Frontispiece with tissue guard and seven other full page illustrations inserted, numerous illustrations in text. Spine sunned to tan; sunning and dampspotting to margins of covers; spine has top half inch chipped away, small pieces missing with loss of parts of "Illustrated Standard", bottom 1/8 inch chipped away; inner hinges cracked; occasional soil spots in text; mainly VG otherwise, sound in the binding. With armorial book plate to front pastedown, and 1854 ink name to front free endpaper, of Thomas Curtis Clarke, eminent American civil engineer and bridge builder. Clarke was a New Englander who moved to Port Hope, Ontario in 1853 to work for the local railway. He married and raised a family there, and was a partner in a Port Hope firm that built the East and West Blocks of Canada's Parliament Buildings in the 1860s. He then moved back to the USA where he pioneered the modern iron viaduct and built major railway bridges that made him famous. Clarke is buried in Port Hope.

A Londres (London): 1780. 12mo, 12.5 cm. [2] [4], 314, [2, blank] pp + rontispiece and two other illustrations. Bound in contemporary mottled calf, spine decorated in gilt with label, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Spine rubbed, with much of the label chipped away, chips to spine tips; small corner of rear free endpaper torn away; else a VG copy, internally clean and unworn. First published Paris & Laussane, 1767, this edition may be the first to bear a spurious London imprint (there were several French editions bearing the false imprint, with the first edition actually printed in London issued probably in 1796). A philosophical novel arranged as a series on conversations, it advocates (in chapter 15) religious tolerance, which caused it to be banned by the Sorbonne and accounts for the editions with the phony London imprint.

Amsterdam: Aux Depens de la Compagnie, 1767. Early printing, same year as the first. Small octavo (17 cm), untrimmed, in later quarter tan calf and marbled boards spine with raised bands, gilt title. pp viii, (190), [2, blank]. Tanning to the page edges, creases to one leaf near middle; else fine externally and internally. Contains an author preface. Pages 1-149 contain the novel BÉLISIARE, which is based on the life of the Byzantine general Flavius Belisarius; pages 151-89 contain his "Fragmens de philosophie morale"'; the last page contains"Vers sur la condemnation de Bélisaire projettée en Sorbonne". The famous plea for religious tolerance in Chapter XV brought on the condemnation of the Sorbonne and the Archbishop of Paris, all but ensuring the book's success. "Bélisaire is a banned 1767 French novel on the life of the Byzantine general Belisarius by Jean-François Marmontel. It popularised the apochryphal tale of his being reduced to beggary by Justinian I despite his great services to the empire, citing it as an example of the ingratitude of those in power towards their faithful servants and indicting the French king Louis XV by proxy as another such ungrateful monarch." - Wikipedia. Marmontel's contributions to the great Encyclopédie, collected as Eléments de Littérature, is still considered a classic of French literature. "John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in history who were the most influential for him. In his autobiography, John Stuart Mill credits Memoires d'un père with curing him of depression." - Wikipedia. A nice copy of this French classic.