Folger-specific note
Purchase made possible by The Elizabeth L. Eisenstein Acquisitions Fund.
Ordered from Christopher Edwards, D 9098, 2017-06-23, Email quote.
From dealer's description: "The present book has clear indications of London origin. Not only does it have catchwords and signatures with arabic numerals ('D6' etc), but the line of typeflowers above the dedication, the Avis and the beginning of the text are all in very characteristic English style: the line above the dedication has ornaments which are a crown above alternately a rose and a fleur-de-lys (clearly the latter was intended to indicate Frenchness). Add to this the fact that this book was owned in 1688 by an Englishwoman, Jane Garrard - her name is written upside-down at the end: 'Madam Jane Garrard her Booke 1688'. This could easily be Jane Garrard (1675-1724), daughter of Sir John Garrard, 3rd bt, who married Montague Drake in 1691: their son Montague Garrard Drake became an MP and travelled in France and Italy. More important than this evidence, I think, is the fact that the book is dedicated to 'Mademoiselle de Queroualle', with fulsome praise of her as someone who 'dans les deux plus belles Cours de l'Europe, a le mieux entendu la belle Galanterie'. There were in fact two very prominent people of this name in London in the early 1670s: the first and most famous was Louise de Kéroualle (1649-1734) and her sister Henriette-Mauricette. The latter did not come to London until 1674, when she soon married the mad (and dangerous) 7th Earl of Pembroke; but Louise, as is well known, was the mistress of Charles II from 1671 onwards and gave birth to an illegitimate son by him in 1672. On 19 August 1673 she was created Duchess of Portsmouth, so the dedication must have been written - and one assumes the book published - before that date. Only two years later, the book wsa translated into English by Nathaniel Noel under the title The Circle, or Conversations on Love and Gallantry (London, no publisher, 1675: Wing B4345A), and with a dedication to the Duchess of Monmouth (wife of another of Charles II's illegitimate sons), and with woodcut music interspersed in the text. Not in Wing or ESTC. For Sébastien Brémond, see Edwin P. Grobe in Romance Notes 4 (1963), pp. 132-5. For Brémond's encounters with the English law, see CSP Domestic 7 March 1674; and 18, 21 and 23 April 1676."
From dealer's description: "First edition, and despite the imprint almost certainly printed in England. The English origin of this book does not seem to have been recognised before, although the author is well known to have been resident in London for much of the 1670s. 'Resident' would, in fact, be a euphemism, because Sébastien Brémond was in prison for at least part of that time. This novel's authorship has also been in question, with attributions to Gabriel Brémond (author of an Italian-language book of travels in the Middle East), Madame de Villedieu and the Sieur de Montfort. It's hard to understand why, because the dedication here is actually signed 'S. Bremond' and it's difficult to see why one would not ascribe the text to him. Even the Bibliothèque Nationale catalogue persists in attributing this and most of Sébastien's works to Gabriel, however, and the mistake seems to be very hard to root out. Sébastien Brémond was born in Toulon about 1646. Edwin Grobe sums him up as 'alternately adventurer, writer, soldier, spy, diplomat', and says that he travelled in North Africa, Europe and the Near East. He was certainly in London in the 1670s because in 1674 he was imprisoned for manslaughter and burnt in the hand (he escaped severer punishment by pleading benefit of clergy); and in a fascinating case in 1676 he was named as the author of a politically suspect novel Hattige, ou les Amours du Roy Tamerlain, for which Henry Oldenburg refused a licence (not only to have it translated into English, but even to have it distributed in the original French), because he thought it was a libel on the King. It was said to have been printed in Holland, but an informant claimed that he was certain it was printed in London, 'both by the letter and correction'. This could be the edition said to be printed at Cologne for 'Simon l'Africain' in 1676 (copy at BnF); but no edition was avowedly printed in England until 1680, when an English-language edition was published with the obviously false imprint of Amsterdam (again, 'for Simon the African'); it is widely supposed to have been published by Richard Bentley, who seems to have been in cahoots with Brémond all along, and the novel itself is said to be a fictionalising of Charles II's affair with Lady Castlemaine."
