Very Rare. ESTC records only Clark Library and University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the USA; Bibliothèque Mazarine only in Europe (“Imperfect; wanting preliminary leaf to vol. 2”). Texas A&M have a seemingly unique edition printed the following year in Liege. No copies recorded in Rare Book Hub.
A very handsome copy of a rare Anglo-French novel centred on the tortuous love story of Sophie Mostain and George Love-Rose who are separated by class but through various tragic travails end up happily married. Almost certainly printed in Paris but seemingly available on both sides of the Channel.
Sophie and her eventual husband George are - rather unusually - first connected when they inadvertently become infected with the same strain of small pox (they share a mutual doctor who seems to have passed the disease between them). George, we are told, is “beau comme Adonis” and recently returned from fighting in the British Army: “c’est un brave garçon, bon Anglois; il a rossé ces chiens d’Américains…” (Vol I, p.46-7).
Sophie’s house is destroyed by fire after a lightning strike and she eventually meets George in person but despite her strong feelings for him finds that he is promised to Amelia Grosvenor, a very wealthy woman chosen for him by his father. Very much like Richardson’s Pamela, Sophie faces various travails as she first accepts George marrying Amelia (even continuing to live with the couple for a while) before she is violently kidnapped by a man who attempts to forcibly marry her but she remains devoted to George. At the end of the novel Amelia dies and after a polite period of mourning (and with the dead wife’s blessing) the couple at the centre of the novel are drawn together in a happy ending.
The main action of the novel is split between London and Paris with a couple of explanatory footnotes for a French reader such as a note that, “Les valets, en Angleterre, boivent peu de vin, vû son extrême cherté; la bierre est leur boisson ordinaire” (Vol I p.130), but there are also many pro-English sentiments such as when George is told, “tu es Anglois, ce mot suffit pour te dire que tu dois être brave & prudent…” (Vol I p.31) There is also a scene set in London’s Ranelagh pleasure gardens.
This is one of the many novels written by Charlotte de Bournon (1753-1842) who married Jean-Étienne Malarmé in 1769 and became known as the Countess de Bournon-Malarmé. During the American Revolutionary War she accompanied her husband to America. Her 1782 novel Le Fripon parvenu which was co-authored with Henri-Alexis Cahaisse was deemed libellous and she was sent to the Bastille for nearly two months.
Thomas Hookham (1739-1819) was a printer, bookseller, publisher and operator of a fashionable circulating library on Bond Street in London. There are at least ten books recorded in ESTC with the joint imprint of Hookham and “la veuve Duchesne” or Marie-Antoinette Duchesne (c.1713-1793) the Parisian bookseller and publisher who continued to run the business after the death of her husband in 1765.
Provenance: Thomas Westwood (1814-88), poet, railway adminsitrator in Flanders, and collector and bibliographer of angling books, with his smaller armorail bookplate with the crest only. His library was sold by Henry Sotheran & Co. in 1897, though this title was not included. Paul Eudel (1837-1911), shipowner, silver collector and art critic and journalist, with his armorial bookplate, sale, Paris, 12-14 May, 1898, lot 266.
