Mémoires du Comte de Vaxère ou le faux rabin, par l'auteur des Lettres juives

First edition, rare. A frontispiece depicting Isaac Meïo as frontispiece by the author, as well as a figure created by the same. Title page in red and black.
Contemporary full glazed calf binding. Spine with four raised bands decorated with a red morocco title-label. All edges speckled. Headcaps worn, joints cracked and corners slightly bumped. Some faint dampstains and a small tear at the bottom of page 15.
A worthy representative of the Age of Enlightenment, Boyer d'Argens is a philosophical writer, skeptic and pamphleteer; his series of critical and epistolary books, in the manner of the Persian Letters (Jewish Letters, Chinese Letters, Cabalistic Letters) made him famous. In the epistle, the author confesses his motivations in writing this novel: a Jewish usurer having deceived him during his military period, he claims to paint here an honest Jew. The work is in fact a libertine novel recounting the loves of the Count de Vaxere, initially destined for the ecclesiastical state. Love for a Venetian Jewish woman will lead him to conversion.