Louise Tardieu d'Esclavelles ÉPINAY

New edition expanded with additions, notes and unpublished clarifications.
Half bottle-green morocco bindings, spines faded with five raised bands set with gilt fillets, marbled paper boards, marbled paper endpapers and pastedowns, top edges gilt.
A portrait of Madame Epinay pasted opposite the introduction page of the first volume.
Foxing.

New edition
Half caramel calf binding, spine with five raised bands set with gilt dots decorated with double gilt fillets, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, contemporary binding.
Handsome copy.

First edition. There would be three editions the same year.
Contemporary half brown sheep bindings with corners. Smooth spines decorated with gilt compartments and fleurons as well as red and blue morocco title and volume labels. Joints slightly cracked and showing some rubbing. Some dampstaining.
"Woman writer, salonnière and friend of philosophers and famous writers in the 18th century, Louise d'Épinay is the author of Memoirs whose originality is situated on two levels: from the point of view of content first, because it is a history of her family and the literary events of the century, a history however 'self-reflective' and filled with her own feelings and reflections; then, from the point of view of form, since it involves a singular combination of letters, memories and first-person diary pages and short third-person narratives." Sanda Nemeth-Badescu, Dalhousie French Studies, 2005. The famous muse of the late 18th century was indeed a friend of Rousseau, Grimm, Diderot, Voltaire, etc, and her memoirs interspersed with correspondence best illustrate the world of letters of this late 18th century.