Instructions Pour Les Seigneurs et Leurs Gens D'Affaires by M. R**, Avocat au Parlement de Toulouse - 1770

Paris: Chez Lotlin/Chez La Combe, 1770. Hardcover. Good+. Instructions for Lords and their Valets". Possibly a 1st edition; the 'Approbation' is dated 1769. This is extremely scarce; we haven't heard of another copy. I had no luck finding the identity of Monsieur "R**", but I don't read French. Good plus, in a very old binding, possibly contemporary. Full leather finished with a marbling effect (boards slt. bowed), gilt borders, gilt title and many devices on spine, marbled endpapers, red chalk edges. Corners worn and bumped, spine ends worn, external front hinge weak so that leather is beginning to split. (2" near the top). The text has been trimmed for the binding, but the margins were quite large. The tail of a trimmed-off owner's name appears at the top of the title page. The 18th-century marbled paper is quite beautiful; the binder was a bit clumsy and there are creases in both pastedowns. A splay of foxing on the half-title page, but nowhere else. Text pages (in French) very clean and bright. Printed by Lottin, one of the more prolific publishers of 18th-century France. 278 pp. An interesting guide to recommended behavior published just 19 years before the Revolution.