Descrizione

16mo (135x78 mm). Hand-colored engraved frontispiece and 180 pp. Contemporary marbled calf, richly gilt spine with double morocco lettering piece, marbled endleaves, yellow edges, light blue silk bookmark (slightly worn, joints rubbed). On the front flyleaf armorial bookplate of the Marquis de Fayolle (1851–1933), a scholar and member of the Périgord Historical and Archaeological Society. On the half title manuscript note “À Charles”. A very good copy.
Rare first edition of this collection of humorous anecdotes and verses on wine and drunkenness, compiled by Armand Henri Ragueneau de La Chainaye under the pseudonym Anagramme Dauneur, and published by Madame Cavanagh.
The wine lovers and drunkards presented for the reader's amusement include priests, soldiers, actresses, bankers, peasants and nobles, as well as Scots, Bretons, Swiss, Englishmen, Turks and Italians. The appendix contains extracts, mainly devoted to food and drink, taken from two works by the Comte de Caylus.
The frontispiece, enhanced here with contemporary colours, depicts a drunkard vomiting on his tipsy companion, who jokes that his wife won't notice he's drunk on wine after being “cleaned” in this way.
Louise-Marie-Françoise-Lucie Cavanagh (d. 1815) divorced her husband, the bookseller Jean-Nicolas Barba (1769-1846), in 1803. She then established her own publishing house under the name “Madame Cavanagh”, specializing in plays.
OCLC, 457458229; Quérard, VII, pp. 437-438.