Letters on the French Nation. Considered in its Different Departments: With many interesting Particulars relating to its Placemen (sic). By Sir Robert Talbot, Who attended the Duke of Bedford to Paris in 1762. Translated from the French. 2 vols.

London, B. White, 1771. XVI, 333 pp.; IV, 391 pp. 12mo. Contemp. calf, spines with two labels and some gilt decoration, gilt supralibros with the arms of Karl Philipp Theodor von der Pfalz (extremities slightly rubbed). With exlibris Franz Pollack-Parnau. London, B. White, 1771. First English edition of the "Lettres du chevalier de Talbot" (Amsterdam, 1768) by Maubert de Gouvest (1721-1767), French homme de lettres who was secretary to the King of Poland and conducted diplomatic missions to other European governments. The politics of his era were almost always the theme of his writings, often published in Lausanne. In the present work he offers a critical description of the Parisian society, pretending that these observations had been made by an impartial English gentleman. He is best-known for his fictitious "Lettres iroquoises", written in the tradition of Montesquieu's "Lettres persanes". Charles Philipp Theodore von der Pfalz (1724-1799), Elector of the Palatinate branch of the House of Wittelsbach was a patron of arts, and the most powerful prince in Germany after the Emperor and the King of Prussia. He was a scholarly man under whose rule science and the arts flourished, a beautifier of the new capital Mannheim and builder of the Castle of Schwetzingen. After a separation of centuries, he was able to reunited the Palatinate with Bavaria and moved to Munich. - A good copy. - Cf. Cioranescu 43800 (French ed. 1768); Quérard, La France littéraire, V, 628 (French ed. 1768); Beaumarchais/Couty/Rey III, 1539; Hoefer XXXIV, 335 (French eds. 1766 and 1768). LITERATURE: ENGLISH ; LITERATUR: FREMDSPRACHIGE ;