Gambling, Bigotry, and Amorous Adventures
[GAMBLING.]
Les desordres du jeu, avec des reflexions. Par Monsieur **. Amsterdam, Adrien Braekman, 1691.
[bound with:]
[PRINGY, Jeanne Michelle de.] Les differens caracteres des femmes du siecle. Avec la description de l’amour propre. Contenant six caracteres & six perfections. The Hague, Abraham de Hondt and Jacob van Ellinkhuysen, [c. 1705].[and:]
[VIENNA.] Journal amoureux de la Cour de Vienne. ‘Cologne, Pierre Marteau’ [i.e. Netherlands], 1689.Three works in one volume, 12mo, I: pp. 94, [2]; woodcut vignette to title-page, woodcut initial and tailpiece; II: pp. [xii], 154, without final blank G6; woodcut initial, woodcut and typographic headpieces; III: pp. 460; woodcut vignette to title-page, woodcut initials, typographic headpieces; light staining to lower corner, repaired tears to B3 and C9 of first work, else very good copies; bound in contemporary Dutch vellum sewn two-on on three thongs laced in, evidence of early stab-stitching, spine lettered in manuscript; boards warped, lower endpapers browned.
A sammelband of three rare works, all printed anonymously or under false imprints, one on stereotypes of women – written by a woman for a female readership; another on the the evils of gambling; and a fictional account of licentious behaviour at the court of Vienna.
Games of chance were subject to increasing moral and regulatory pressure in the seventeenth century as a result of their perceived threat to the social and economic order. The participation of women in games of chance was considered to break down established social boundaries among the upper classes and even to encourage intimacy between the sexes.
This text addresses the problems of games and gambling by analysing the motivations behind it, then looking at the people affected by category: princes, churchmen, courtiers, the military, women, the young, and the old.
Jeanne-Michelle de Pringy (1660–1709) composed several works on the character of women, all aimed at a female readership. ‘Steeped in the theological and philosophical debates of late seventeenth-century France, Pringy’s criticisms of women’s behaviour should be understood in terms of her psychological theory. Her work shows how a particular moralist subgenre, the caractère, may be deployed to critique social practices (its usual role), to explore the damaging psychological effects of those practices, and to offer a mechanism for change’ (Candler Hayes, Women Moralists in early modern France, p. 227). Her six character types which display failings are counterbalanced by six virtues to correct those failings, and the final section discusses the cause of the problem, ‘self-love, the dominant passion of women’ (trans.).
The first work is a reprint of the 1691 Paris edition by Estienne Michallet, which is also very rare. The second work was originally published in 1694, in both Paris and Lyons. The third work, an early Marteau false imprint, was also issued with a Marteau imprint in 1690 and 1711. The false imprint of ‘Pierre Marteau’ was first used in 1660 and continued into the twentieth century, widely used by Dutch publishers, and it became an indication of a subversive, radical, or even pornographic work. The anonymous author of the Journal amoureux states, in the preface, that while the galanterie of the French court is well known, that of the Austrian court is not, so he will tell tales of three or four aristocratic women, but without naming them in order to avoid shaming their families (p. 5). Fictional memoirs like this were a popular genre; here the contempt shown by courtiers for their lovers is revealed.
I: We find a single copy outside continental Europe, in Nevada; no copies traced in the UK. II: We find one copy in the US (Chicago), and none in the UK. III: No copies traced in the US and only two copies in the UK (BL and Trinity College Cambridge).
I: USTC 1559942; STCN 419592490; II: STCN 327962151; III: USTC 2579753 & 1819399; STCN 213774437; VD17 3:604516S.