Hordern House

ARTUS, Thomas, Sieur d'Embry Description de l'Isle des Hermaphrodites Nouvellement Découverte... Cologne, Herman Demen, 1724

Octavo, with an engraved frontispiece; a fine copy in contemporary calf, slightly rubbed, spine panelled in gilt.

Second edition of this imaginary voyage to the island of the hermaphrodites, an allegorical attack on the court of Henri III (the first edition of 1605 is excessively rare). Little is known about Artus, except that he came from a noble Parisian family. His book is a virulent satire on European manners generally, and the French court specifically, in which a vast array of evils are 'ironically depicted as admirable' (Gibson).

It is also an important work in the imaginary voyage tradition because, as Atkinson comments, it 'attempts to present a realistic setting, based upon accounts of genuine voyages'. Given this, it is unsurprising that a series of editions were reissued in the first half of the eighteenth century, of which this is the first. Interestingly, unlike the physical hermaphroditism depicted in works such as Foigny's, Artus uses the concept metaphorically to support his sustained attack on the perceived effeminacy of the French court. Thus Atkinson: 'In the virile eyes of the author the attention of these people to fine raiment, cosmetics, and soft indulgence makes them less than men, and more like women'.
Barbier, I, p. 893; Gibson, 610; Negley, 44.

$A1750

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