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Interesting financial history by an even more interesting, extravagant and intriguing author

ÉON DE BEAUMONT, Charles G.L.A.A.T. d'.
Memoires pour servir a l'histoire generale des finances.

Two titles printed in red & black with engraved printer's device.

Amsterdam, Aux depens de la Compagnie, 1760. 2 vols. in one. 12mo. Contemporary calf, red gilt title label on ribbed spine, red edges. Two titles printed in red & black with engraved printer's device. (4), LXVIII, 108; (4), 216 pp.

Second edition of this interesting financial history by an even more interesting, extravagant and intriguing author. The first edition had appeared in 1758 in London (= Paris) with Louis Pierre Mortier.
The full name of the author - referred to on the title as 'Mr. Deon de Beaumont' - is Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Thimothée d'Eon de Beaumont, a French diplomat, writer, spy, and Freemason, a member of the elite Dragoons and one of the best swordsmen of France, whose true gender was a source of speculation and provoked public bets in the late 18th century. Generally it was believed that d'Eon was born female, but he had started to dress as a man in his childhood, and changed back from 'a bad boy into a good girl', when his secret was revealed decades later. After his death it turned out that he was a man who had dressed as a woman. D'Eon is often called the patron saint of transvestites.
Éon de Beaumont was born in Tonnere, into a family of lawyers. Little is known of d'Eon's childhood and his book of memoirs, La Vie Militaire, politique, et privée de Mademoiselle d'Eon (1779), written by his friend La Fortelle, is not very reliable.
D'Eon learned to read at a very young age, and at school he excelled in languages and won awards for memorization. After graduating from College Mazarin in Paris in 1749 he worked as the secretary of Monsieur de Sauvigny, administrator of the fiscal department of Paris. There he completed his book on French government finance. He then worked as a royal censor, spending his time with books. In 1756 d'Eon joined the King's Secret, a network of spies, who worked more for the King himself than the Foreign Ministry.
In 1761 he was appointed a captain of the elite Dragoons. The Seven Years' War, which had started in 1756, was nearing its end, and d'Eon fought only in one major campaign. However, he showed courage and skill, and also was wounded in the head and thigh.
His lifestyle was sumptuous, he enjoyed fully his high position. In 1764 he published in Lettres, mémoires, et négociations particuliéres secret diplomatic correspondence dealing with his diplomatic career and his following exile. The book made d'Eon famous. During his London residency he spent much of his time in his library, which contained eventually some 6,000 books and 500 rare manuscripts.
D'Eon's political exile lasted fourteen years. In 1785, however, four years before the French Revolution, d'Eon returned to England where he lived the rest of his life. D'Eon died in London on May 21, 1810. Postmortem examination proved that he was not a hermaphrodite, or a woman, but a male.

Good set, with ms. owners inscription P. Lemarie 1861 on first blank.- (Spine sl. damaged).

Goldsmith'-Kress Library 9587; Higgs, Bibl. of economics 2320; and a host of biographies on D'Eon: André Frank, D'Eon: chevalier et chevalière (1953); Edna Nixon, Royal Spy: The Strange Case of the Chevalier d'Eon (1965); Cynthia Cox, The Enigma of the Age: The Strange Story of the Chevalier d'Eon (1966); M. Cadéac, Le Chevalier d'Eon et son problème psychosexuel (1966); Gary Kates, Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman (1995); and Mark Brownell, Monsieur d'Eon (2001)

Related Subjects: 18th Century Economy France

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