First edition, ostensibly translated from a manuscript rescued by an Officer of the Guards at the Bastille, but in fact an original English thrust at French foreign policy following the death of Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, the able chief minister of Louis XV and political ally of Sir Robert Walpole.

It takes the form of a dialogue between ‘the restless unhappy shade of the late Cardinal’ and fellow minister Pierre Guérin de Tencin, Archbishop of Lyons, in which the ghost takes Tencin to task over his poor performance: ‘Business of Importance will never prosper in your Hands, and no Man is more unfit for it, than your Eminence’. Much of the heated interview centres on threats to French foreign policy: Spanish commercial gains in America, the future strength of Russia, and the growing influence of Britain. ‘Dreadful Prospect! How chang’d! how wretched! how alter’d is poor France become, in a short Space of Time!’

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BALZAC, Honoré de, and Fedor Kuz’mich SOLOGBUB, pseud. [Fedor TETERNIKOV], translator.

Ozornye skazki [Contes drolatiques]…

First edition, very rare, of Sologub’s translation of two of Balzac’s satirical Contes drolatiques, ‘The fair Imperia’ and ‘The fair Imperia married’.

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[THOMPSON, Thomas].

The genuine tryal of Dr. Nosmoth, a physician in Pekin; for the murder of the Mandarine Tonwin … Taken in short hand by the linguist of the English factory.

First edition, a satire, putting Dr. Nosmoth, aka Thomas Thompson, on trial for causing the death of ‘Mandarine Tonwin’, aka Thomas Winnington, the Paymaster of the Forces. The somewhat shady circumstances surrounding the death soon attracted the attentions of Society gossip, including being discussed by Horace Walpole, who narrates the history of the affair in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, on April 25, 1746.

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