First edition of the French translation by Élisabeth de Bon, gathering in 2 volumes the 4 parts of this anonymous English novel originally printed in 1809, which according to André Marc in his Dictionnaire des romans anciens et modernes of 1819, is the work of Anna Maria Porter, younger sister of the novelist Jane Porter. The Porter sisters, contemporaries of Jane Austen and famous before the Brontës, were close to the Scottish poet Walter Scott.
Contemporary full brown glazed tree sheep, smooth spines divided into compartments richly gilt in decorative rolls of laurels, annulets and lozenges, two compartments with a lozenge network formed by interlacing fillets with fleurons at the corners, red and green morocco lettering-piece and numbering-piece, blind-tooled fillet border to boards, gilt fillet to turn-ins, edges sprinkled red, marbled endpapers in pebbled pattern.
Some light surface wear and minor offsetting to boards, corners slightly worn. On volume 1, a charming error in the decorative roll at foot of spine, corrected by the binder. On volume 2, small piece of leather at the edge of the numbering-piece slightly detaching.
Scattered foxing and faint marginal damp-staining to upper margins. In volume 3, two minor marginal repairs to half-title and p. 8.
Several period textual corrections in brown ink and pencil: volume 1 p. 131, volume 2 p. 90, and volume 3 p. 21.