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How to become a Don Juan

[LACLOS, Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos DE].
Les Liaisons dangereuses, ou Lettres Recueilles dans une Société, & publiées pour l'instruction de quelques autres. Par M. C..... De L.

With woodcut vignettes on 4 titles, and charming woodcut head-piece to each part.

With woodcut vignettes on 4 titles, and charming woodcut head-piece to each part.

With woodcut vignettes on 4 titles, and charming woodcut head-piece to each part.

With woodcut vignettes on 4 titles, and charming woodcut head-piece to each part.



Amsterdam, se trouve à Paris, Chez Durand Neveu, 1782. 4 parts in 2 vols. Contemporary calf, spines ribbed and gilt, with red title-labels, red stippled edges. With woodcut vignettes on 4 titles, and charming woodcut head-piece to each part. 248; 240; 230; 256 pp.

Rare early edition, a variant of the second edition, of one of the most famous books of French literature, a novel in letters about free and almost amoral schemes of courting and seducing women, written by Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803). Laclos was in the first place a military man who made a successful career from Captain of the Engineering Corps to Inspector General of the Artillery of Napoleon. He wrote literature in his hours of leisure, and just the one novel. It had such an immediate success that it was sold within a month, but so displeased military authorities that the author refrained from further literary exercise. The author himself defined his novel as belonging to the genre of moralistic literature, of which Rousseau's "Héloise" formed the zenith. A quotation from the preface to Rousseau's work served as motto for Laclos' novel, on all four titles reading: "J'ai vu les moeurs de mon temps, & j'ai publié ces Lettres" (I have seen the morals of my time, and I have published these Letters).

Fine copy.- (Bindings very sl. rubbed, top of one spine sl. worn off; small library stamps on 2 titles; one quire sl. foxed).
Ciaronescu 35211; cf. Bulletin du Bibliophile et du Bibliothécaire, 1952, no. 2,  pp. 45-52. Our copy is a variant of C.

Related Subjects: 18th Century  French  Literature 

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