Jacques le fataliste et son maître

First edition in-12 of Jacques le Fataliste et son maître, the very first issue to include three engraved frontispieces. The text is preceded by a tribute to Diderot by Jacques-Henri Meister, a close friend of the author and Grimm's successor at the head of the Correspondance littéraire.

Contemporary marbled sheepskin bindings, gilt borders to the covers, smooth spines with gilt compartments and fleurons, brown lettering-pieces and numbering-pieces, gilt roulette to the board edges, pastedowns in blue paste paper, all edges gilt. Rubbing to the joints and corners, a few scattered spots to the leaves, otherwise an attractive copy.

Conceived from 1765 onward, revised and expanded over nearly twenty years, this philosophical narrative first appeared in serial form in the Correspondance littéraire between 1778 and 1780, before receiving further additions in 1780 and again in 1786. Its true first edition was not published until 1796, by Buisson, and it received, as does the present edition, an introduction written by Jacques-Henri Meister. This posthumous tribute to Diderot, written by a friend well acquainted with the genesis of the work, likewise came from the Correspondance littéraire, where it had first appeared ten years earlier.

This edition, which followed closely on the first — the earliest in-12 according to Cioranescu — is distinguished by three frontispieces accompanied by captions illustrating episodes from the novel: Jacques throwing himself into the executioner's arms, "Vous ne savez pas qui je suis ! [You do not know who I am!]", the servant tending the little dog that caused the quarrel between Jacques and the hostess, "Il y a un sort pour les bêtes comme pour les gens [There is a fate for beasts as there is for men]", and Denise tending to Jacques's knee wound, "Jacques la regardait faire et s’enivrait d’amour [Jacques watched her and grew intoxicated with love]".

Even before it appeared in French, the novel had already begun another life in Germany, where it had been circulating for some years in manuscript, periodical, and translated form. Its most notable success came with the episode of Mme de La Pommeraye, which was translated by Schiller for his review Thalia; Doray de Longrais subsequently retranslated it into French under the title Exemple singulier de la vengeance d'une femme. In 1792, Mylius produced the first complete German translation, while another manuscript of the novel, owned by Prince Henry of Prussia, was communicated to the Institut national.

Its formal freedom owes much to Sterne's Tristram Shandy: interruptions, digressions, a narrative constantly relaunched or suspended, and a running dialogue with the reader.

First edition of in-12 format of this celebrated philosophical tale, the very first to be issued with engraved frontispieces.