MÉRARD DE SAINT-JUST, Simon-Pierre] - Oeuvres galantes et li - Lot 715

MÉRARD DE SAINT-JUST, Simon-Pierre] - Oeuvres galantes et littéraires by Mme de Palmareze. Paris, chez les Marchands de Nouveautés, 1792. 3 volumes in 2 vols. in-16, (3) ff. 248 pp. ; 184 pp. ; (3) ff. 136 pp. qqs. russets, cherry half-calf with corners, spine ribbed and decorated, gilt head (PETIT successor to SIMIER). GAY II, 158. PIA col. 521. The publisher (Mérard de Saint-Just) claims to have printed only 100 copies of Les oeuvres galantes. Also published under the title (first edition cited by Gay): Les Espiégleries, joyeusetés, bons mots, folies, etc., chez l'auteur, 1782. This dated title appears in only a few copies, and would appear to have been added after the fact. The work also appeared under the title: Folies de la jeunesse de sir S. Peters Talassa-Aitheï, at an unknown date. The true date of the first edition is probably 1789. A collection of free verse and prose pieces of the crudest obscenity. It includes a proverb in two acts entitled: L'esprit des moeurs au XVIIIe siècle. Pornographic in nature, it is said to have been performed on Mlle Guimard's sometimes libertine theater. Mérard specifies in a note at the end of the 3rd vol. that his work had been printed at least twelve years before their publication, but had been seized by the authorities and recovered after the capture of Bastillle. Reprinted under cover by Gay in Brussels in 1880.