[DE LA COSTE.]
Voyage philosophique d’Angleterre fait en 1783 et 1784.
A Londres. Et se trouve à Paris, chez Poinçoit … 1787.
Two vols. in one, 8vo., pp. [iii]-x, [11]-16, 260, 8 [index to both volumes; [2], 248, with a half-title in volume I; some slight foxing, but a good copy in contemporary mottled calf, rubbed, front joint cracked.
First edition, second issue, with cancel title-pages redated 1787 (first 1786) – an interesting and detailed sociological discussion of England and in the English on the eve of the French Revolution, in the form of discursive letters. The author deals with London’s institutions and buildings, taverns and theatres, politics, economics, street-lighting, gin, the spleen, and Laurence Sterne; inset are stories and fables of a more obviously fictional nature.
