Title: Mémoire pour servir à L'histoire des Couplets de 1710. Attribués faussement à Monsieur Rousseau
Description: <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"> 12mo. pp. 131, ff. [4] (folded, with 8 etched plates). Contemporary gilt-ruled tan calf, flat spine and red morocco label gilt, red edges, green silk marker.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">First edition, a defense of the French playwright and biting epigrammatist Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1670-1741) from charges of defamation, similar to those brought against him in 1712, when his non-appearance in court led to a sentence of permanent exile. Boindin here reproduces in facsimile the manuscript of couplets attributed to Rousseau in an earlier libel action (September-October 1710) as demonstrably non-autograph forgeries, perhaps the earliest such use of handwriting evidence in a strictly literary context, and exonerates Rousseau (in this instance) of their authorship. The Brussels imprint appears to be fictitious: see G. Brunet, Imprimeurs imaginaires et libraires supposes. Étude bibliographique. Paris, 1866, no. 54.
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