Jacques le Fataliste et son maître

First edition, posthumous, printed on Holland paper.
Contemporary full marbled brown calf binding, spine in compartments richly decorated, red morocco title label, black morocco volume label, a small loss to the lower joint at the foot, rubbing marks, surface abrasions to the upper cover with a small loss of leather, one corner bumped, marginal loss to the right corner on pages 247 and 257.

Paper generally fresh. This copy has been bound as a single volume, following the 1772 edition of Diderot’s Works in 6 volumes (Volume VI, II).

A good copy.
The introductory text, à la mémoire de Diderot, is by Jakob-Heinrich Meister, a friend of Necker and successor to Frédéric Melchior Grimm at the Correspondance littéraire.
The novel, conceived from 1765 onwards, was first issued in instalments in this journal between 1778 and 1780. The published version, however, is not definitive, as Diderot continued to expand it until his death: the work, which comprised 125 pages in 1771, reached 200 pages in 1778, 208 in 1780, and 287 in 1783. Yet the work was already known in Germany prior to its French publication, thanks to Schiller’s translation (published in 1787 in his journal Thalia). Following this version, Doray de Longrais produced a French version of the same narrative. In 1792, Germany discovered the complete text through a new translation by Mylius. Finally, in 1796, the original text was published in France, based on a copy likely supplied by Grimm or Goethe.
An unclassifiable work, breaking free from all the conventions of the novel, it draws on the picaresque tradition and inherits the freedom of a book that deeply influenced Diderot: Vie et opinions de Tristram Shandy, by Sterne.