CORSICA. - BOSWELL (James). État de la Corse,... Lot 7

CORSICA. - BOSWELL (James). État de la Corse, suivi d'un Journal d'un voyage dans l'isle et des Mémoires de Pascal Paoli. London, s.n. [in fact Lausanne, printed by Abraham-Louis Tarin for François Grasset], 1769. 2 volumes in-12, xlviii-234 + (2 of which the second is blank)-369-(1) pp. in marbled brown basane, smooth spines cloisonné and fleuronné with green title and tomaison pieces, ornate coupes, marbled edges; spines a little rubbed with traces of label on tail, snag on one headband, two corners dulled (contemporary binding). ORIGINAL EDITION OF THIS FRENCH TRANSLATION, based on the texts of the English and Italian editions by Gabriel Seigneux de Correvon (1695-1775) from Lausanne. A pedagogue, writer and philosopher, and translator of Haller, Risi and Addison, he was a man of the Enlightenment, whose Helvetianism made him particularly attached to the notion of freedom, which he found at work in the Corsica of his time: "40 years of resistance to tirannie is a sure guarantee that generous men, well united, will be invincible" ("Translator's preface" to the present edition). An edition was also published by Pierre Pellet in Geneva, probably as a forgery, and another French translation, based on the second English edition by J.-P.-J. Dubois, appeared the same year in The Hague. Without the frontispiece portrait and out-of-text map. Provenance: P. Biziou (handwritten bookplate, and possibly his library's mark on the title). - Magistrate and writer Xavier Versini (triple bookplate, i.e. his signature on the title and p. 11, then his initials on p. 26).