Courier de l'Europe, gazette anglo-françoise ; M. DCC. LXXXI. Volume neuvième [-dixième] - Année 1781 complète

First edition of this periodical, comprising for the complete year 1781 (from 2 January to 28 December) 104 issues, the text printed in two columns with continuous pagination.

Contemporary half calf, mottled fawn, smooth spines decorated with gilt compartment tooling and floral ornaments, beige calf lettering-pieces and blue calf volume labels; minor losses and rubbing to spines and joints, a few scuffs to the blue paper boards, bumped corners, red edges; bindings contemporary to publication.

Transposition of ff. 357–58 and 359–60; initials in black ink and numbering to the endpapers; bookplate affixed and marginally torn in the first volume, another bookplate covered over in the second.

A biweekly periodical founded in June 1776, published until December 1792.

Its contributors included Serres de la Tour, Théveneau de Morande, and Brissot—already well-known publicists and scarcely “ministerial,” as was then said. Printed in England for readerships on both sides of the Channel, though primarily intended to inform a French audience about English institutions, it was avidly read in Paris, especially throughout the Anglo-French war over the American colonies. Along its columns one finds exceptionally rich documentation on that conflict (relative strengths, reports of naval and land engagements, debates in the English Parliament, diplomatic negotiations, etc.). Yet this was not its sole interest: what especially captured French readers of the Courier during this period of anglomania—and what chiefly accounts for the periodical’s value—were its detailed accounts of major English parliamentary sessions, together with numerous articles translated from and drawn from English and American newspapers.