Physiologie de la vie conjugale et des maries au treizieme

104 pages (non-uniform sizes) plus blank end-papers.

Engraved frontispiece.

Binding tight with marbled end-papers. Internally very good with clean pages and clear text. One page with a small tear to paper, touching but not affecting text. Front board and spine very faded and rubbed and with slight marks. Rear board faded at edges and slightly marked.

Edouard Gourdon (1820-1869) was a journalist and author of news books, essays and novels. At the time of writing reference to the "treizième arrondissement" (i.e. the 13th district of Paris) was a coloquialism referring to those living together unmarried, " Ils se mariés à la mairie du 13e " (i.e. they were married at the - non-existent - 13th district town hall) - a state of relations much moralised against. This being the case, especially in 'good society', the enlargement of Paris to include a treizième arrondissement was delayed until 1860. As was written in Le Figaro of 12 October 1859, " Helas ! ce treizieme arrondissement, il est partout, et on n'en veut nulle part ". When finally created, the administrative solution was to base the 13th arrondissement upon working class areas surrounding the Porte d'Italie whilst the bourgeois districts of western Paris were assigned to the also new 16th arrondissement.

The foibles of morality and relationships in marital and non-marital situations are explored in various scenes involving a variety of characters.

Very scarce with just 4 copies listed in WorldCat, although possibly there are 5 copies as the entry for the Catalogue general de la Bibliotheque nationale de France lists two locations. However, for one of them – repeated 3 times – there is the comment "exemplaire repute present".

A fuller exploration of the context surrounding this publication can be found in my blog 'Miscellaneous from Barcelona', blog-post Living in Sin in mid-19th Century Paris (April 2021).