Procès fait aux chansons de P.J. de Béranger [Ensemble] Chansons nouvelles [Ensemble] Procès fait à messieurs de Béranger et Baudouin

First edition of these 3 works bound in 2 volumes. Following the Trial of messieurs de Béranger and Baudouin, 14 manuscript songs retained by the prosecutor general against Béranger and censored. One understands the interest of this copy since the song collection was sold out or seized.
Contemporary full straight-grained green morocco binding. Luxury binding from a major atelier but unsigned. Smooth spine decorated with a blind stamp with floral semé within a double gilt fillet frame. Boards decorated with multiple blind frames doubled with gilt fillets. Gilt edges. Triple gilt interior fillet. Spines uniformly faded. Small dark areas on the boards of one volume. Traces of rubbing. Scattered pale yellow foxing.
Very handsome copies.
Two days after the publication of the author's song collection published at his own expense, the king's prosecutor for the Seine department filed a complaint against the chansonnier and ordered the seizure of the work (the police only managed to seize 500 copies since 10,000 had sold in a few days). He faced four charges: offense to morals, attack on religious morality, offense against the person of the king and incitement to wear a rallying sign unauthorized by the king (the tricolor flag). He was condemned to a minimal sentence of three months in prison and a 500 F fine, essentially for his attacks against the Capuchins and missionaries. Meanwhile, his lawyer Dupin provoked a second trial by publishing his plea accompanied by the text of the incriminated songs as procedural documents. Béranger was a convinced republican and his songs became increasingly virulent under Louis XVIII. After the episode of his trial where all of Paris rushed to attend, he became under Charles X an important figure of the liberal camp.
An engaged author and today forgotten, the chansonnier Béranger enjoyed immense celebrity but posterity has identified him with the acerbic criticisms of Flaubert and Baudelaire as a minor and bourgeois author unjustly revered. The history of his trial, well before those of Baudelaire and Flaubert, reveals the greater complexity of the author and stages the history of censorship under the Restoration.