MEMORIES FROM PARIS
KOTZEBUE, August Friedrich Ferdinand von.
Travels from Berlin, through Switzerland, to Paris, in the Year 1804 … Translated from the German …
London, Richard Phillips, 1804.
Three vols, 8vo, pp. I: iv, [xvi (Contents)], 220; II: [ii], 264; III: [ii], 226; a very good copy in contemporary full polished calf, double gilt fillet to covers, gilt roll to board edges, green morocco labels, Downshire monogram to head of spine.
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Travels from Berlin, through Switzerland, to Paris, in the Year 1804 … Translated from the German …
First edition in English, quickly translated from Kotzebue’s Erinnerungen aus Paris (September 1804). As the German title suggests, the Travels is in fact largely devoted to Paris, with lively observations on Napoleon, Madame Recamier, the Musée des monuments français and Musée Napoleon, restaurants, David’s studio, the theatre, public entertainments, etc.
The chapter on ‘Ladies of pleasure’ describes large numbers ‘sallying forth in swarms from their holes, and exposing their naked charms in all weathers’; they include ‘many negro-women’, and are trailed in the Palais Royal by people flyering for venereal treatments. The work was popular enough to be reprinted in 1805 and 1806, in which year France’s invasion of Prussia led Kotzebue to flee to St Petersburg, whence he returned only in 1817.
