Le tombeau philosophique. Ou histoire du Marquis de ** à Madame de **

First edition. 2 engraved titles.
Armorial copy of Charron, Marquis de Menars.
Full glazed blonde calf binding. Smooth spine decorated with ornate compartment and a compartment bearing the arms of Menars. Red morocco title-label. One stain on the upper board, small spots. Signs of rubbing. One corner slightly bumped. Fine copy.
A typical polygraph author of the 18th century, Jean-François de Bastide was simultaneously writer, playwright, compiler and journalist, thus finding in his pen the means to live. He was born in Marseilles.
Libertine novel in which a man recounts in a long letter the reasons for his retreat from the world and his solitude to a woman in love who urges him to emerge from it. Through the narrative of two destructive passions where jealousy, envy and intemperance intermingle, and whose only outcome will be the death of the beloved object, the Marquis justifies his isolated existence now deprived of the flames that sustained his desires. The novel is reviewed in the critical study by Michèle Bokobza Kahan: Libertinage et folie dans le roman du 18e siècle (Peeters, 2000). A work that would require by its quality a modern critical edition.