Les Étrennes de la St Jean

Second edition, partly original, notably augmented with several additional pieces, complete with the caricature  woodcut portrait of the widow Oudot as frontispiece, printed in green, as is the title. According to Barbier, the burlesque portrait was engraved by one of the authors, the comte de Caylus himself.

Contemporary full mottled brown calf, smooth spine richly gilt with fleurons, palms and scrollwork, brown-red morocco lettering-piece, triple gilt fillet bordering the boards with fleurons at corners, gilt fillet on board edges, all edges gilt, pastedowns and endpapers of small-comb pattern marbled paper.

Small losses to the headcaps, lower joint of the front board split over 1 in., light wear to the joints, some surface scratching to the board margins, front board slightly warped, corners bumped.

Marginal stain on p. 19.

A collection of bons mots, satires and anecdotes, Les Étrennes de la St Jean is a collective work assembled around the comte de Caylus, in the salon of mademoiselle Quinault. The members of the group (Moncrif, Voisenon, Crébillon fils...) called themselves the Société du Bout-du-Banc and composed, in the wake of copious and convivial dinners, several miscellanies: Les Étrennes de la Saint-Jean (one of the best known and most celebrated), Les Écosseuses ou les Œufs de Pâques, Histoire de Guillaume, Quelques Aventures curieuses et galantes des bals de bois, Recueil de ces Messieurs, etc.

"As a young man, the comte de Caylus had paid considerable tribute to the literature of fairy tales, which the translations from the Arabic and Persian by Galland and Pétis de la Croix had brought into fashion; his true self is not to be found in these artificial creations, to which he returned when nearly seventy. But in the intervening years his personality as a writer emerged and declared itself in accordance with his manners and tastes, and in how favourable a setting! The Société du Bout-du-Banc, that academy of Gallic ribaldry presided over by Mlle Quinault; those suppers, at which an inkwell served as centrepiece, and which La Chaussée, d'Armenonville, Voisenon, Moncrif, the Grand Prior of Vendôme, Duclos, Salley and Crébillon fils inflamed with their bawdy and bantering wit. All men of letters with little taste for philosophy, all content to let the world go its own way and finding it well enough as it was, all of that sacred flock of Epicurus, somewhat metamorphosed by Circe, where each is satisfied, or nearly so, with what their presiding lady said was sufficient for Duclos, the least fastidious among them. The popular literature of the eighteenth century — that is, the literature which took the common people as the subject of its observations and tableaux — was born in this company of ribaldry and folly, and the comte de Caylus was its natural father and its foster father; it took its first lively flights in these Écosseuses (1739), in these "Étrennes de la Saint-Jean" (1742), in these "Mémoires de l'Académie des colporteurs," in these "Aventures des bals des Bois," in these "Fêtes roulantes" (1748), a veritable magic lantern of Parisian popular life [...]"

Avertissement, "Mémoires et réflexions du comte de Caylus", 1874

Second edition, partly original, of a collection in the poissard vein, marked by its lightness of tone and naive style, born of the fashionable suppers of the Société du Bout-du-Banc, where several of the finest minds of the eighteenth century gathered, among them Montesquieu and d'Alembert.