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Les nuits d’érpeuve des villageoises allemandes avant la marriage, dissertation sur un usage singulier traduite de l’Allemand et accompagnée de notes d’une postface. Par un Bibliophile.

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First edition in French, numbered 26 of 100 copies, of this obscure study, first published in 1780 as Über die Probenächte der teutschen Bauernmädchen (‘On the Rehearsal Nights of Teutonic Peasant Women’). Brunet’s ‘postface’ builds on the comparisons made in Fischer’s original essay between the Congolese practice of pre-marital, conjugal co-habitation and those of medieval German peasants, adding case studies of various cultures: ‘Oriental’ prostitutes of the modern era; the indigenous peoples of the Tierra del Fuego; and Balearic and Polynesian Islanders.

The work is translated by the bibliographer Pierre-Gustave Brunet (1805–1896), noted for his bibliographies of anonymously published books and of fantastical, unfindable, and unknown texts.

Provenance: William Sturgis Bigelow (1850–1926) was an American art collector, best-known for the collection of Japanese art which he donated to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

OCLC lists six copies, at the BnF, BL (two copies), Cornell, Dallas Public Library, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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