Sterneian Journey
CARACCIOLI, Louis-Antoine, Marquis.
The Travels of Reason in Europe. Translated from the French … London, J. Johnson, and W. Charnley and Vesey and Whitfield, Newcastle, 1778.
12mo, pp. vi, 300; first and last leaf with light offset from the turn-ins, else a very good copy; in contemporary sheep; rubbed, corners worn, rebacked.
First English edition, very rare, of this Sterneian philosophical voyage through Europe, first published at Paris in 1771 according to Quérard, though we cannot trace any copy before 1772.
In the year 1769 Reason chooses to journey through Europe disguised as the amiable philosopher Lucidor, passing comment on manners, fashions, national temperament, theatre and coffee-houses. The short section on Parisian libraries praises King Louis’s collection for its manuscripts; applauds the librarian of St Genevieve’s ‘conservation’; and descries nouveau-riche collectors who bind all their books in morocco, when ‘they had better be bound in a plainer manner, and oftener turned over.’
Louis-Antoine Caraccioli is probably now best known for his Livre a la mode or Livre de quatre couleurs, a social satire and a famous example of conceptual book design, printed at first in green and red and then in four colours.
ESTC shows only three copies: BL, Bodleian (wanting A3, contents); and Cornell. A second edition appeared in 1780.
ESTC T110354.