Oeuvres de Boullanger

New edition, following the first collected edition also published in Amsterdam in 1775 and produced by d'Holbach.
Contemporary full blonde calf bindings. Smooth spines richly decorated with gilt compartments and fleurons, as well as red morocco title labels and green volume labels with red morocco inlay. Fine gilt decorative board-edges framing the boards. Gilt roulettes on the leading edges and headcaps. All edges marbled.
Headcaps slightly rubbed and some minor wormholes. Each volume shows dampstaining to outer margin. Quite good copy, of handsome appearance.
The first volume contains the author's most famous text: L'Antiquité dévoilée, the second the Recherches sur le despotisme oriental, an Essai philosophique que le gouvernement as well as other texts: Esope fabuliste, Du bonheur, Le Christianisme dévoilé, Dissertation sur Elie et Enoch, Examen critique de Saint Paul and Dissertation sur Saint Pierre. The Extrait d'une lettre sur la vie et les ouvrages de Mr. Boulanger which precedes it would be by Diderot according to Grimm. Le Christianisme dévoilé would be by D'Holbach, while the Recherches sur le despotisme oriental is a collective work bringing together d'Holbach and Boulanger. Around Baron d'Holbach formed a sort of coterie (with authors such as Diderot, Boulanger or Naigeon), a spiritual association of figures who had all worked on the great work of the Encyclopédie and who assembled around a certain number of strong ideas: a critique of religious but also philosophical superstition, an atheistic materialism and a utilitarian politics; each of the authors worked toward the deconstruction of Christianity and the edification of materialism, achieving the true combat of the Enlightenment for man's liberation from religious, spiritual and political constraints.