A ROYALIST ALMANACK IN THE MIDST OF THE REVOLUTION
[ALMANACK.]
étrennes mignones [sic], curieuses et utiles, pour l’année mil sept cent quatre-vingt-dix.
Paris, [Jean-François-Hubert] Guillot, 1790.
18mo, pp. 128, folding maps of Paris and France bound in; woodcut printer’s monogram within wreath to title, text within woodcut frame; trimmed close at foot (shaving some signatures but not touching text); a very good copy in contemporary cream silk embroidered in coloured and metallic threads with metal sequins, front board depicting a lyre surmounted by two crossed torches incorporating magenta foil details, rear board depicting a lyre surmounted by two flaming hearts, spine embroidered; edges gilt, pink silk endleaves, silk pocket to inner rear board, silvered glass mirror inlaid to front board; mirror cracked and partially tarnished with one shard displaced, endleaves and pocket somewhat dampstained, slight wear to corners and discolouration to spine, nonetheless an excellent copy.
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étrennes mignones [sic], curieuses et utiles, pour l’année mil sept cent quatre-vingt-dix.
Very rare almanack for 1790, in a handsome contemporary binding of silk and sequins featuring lyres surmounted by hearts and torches, issued on the eve of the French Revolution with much material on the storming of the Bastille and revolts throughout France.
The Parisian almanacks étrennes mignonnes appeared from 1725 to 1848, published by Jouënne and later Lambert and Durand; Guillot, from 1787 (as here); and finally by Demoraine in the nineteenth century.
This almanack contains, inter alia, a list of the royal academies of Paris; Parisian curiosities and monuments including the Hôtel des Invalides and the tombs of Richelieu and Mazarin; an advertisement for a remedy against miscarriage by the widow Pitara; and a brief geographical and historical overview of France (‘La France est un Etat Monarchique héréditaire …’).
Of particular interest is a detailed account of the recent Estates General of 1789 and the storming of the Bastille, reporting with rather heavy royalist bias that the King had promised always to listen to the people, was greeted with cries of Vive le Roi, and had expressed surprise at seeing so many armed citizens in Paris on 17 July; there follow accounts of a bloody uprising in Rennes in January 1789 and of peasant revolts in Auvergne in July.
CCfr finds a single copy, at Versailles. OCLC records copies at the University of Pennsylvania and the New England Historic Genealogical Society, to which Library Hub adds another, at Cambridge University Library.
See Grand-Carteret 107; Saffroy 257.
