ALBON, Claude-Camille-François, Comte d’. Discours politiques, historiques et critiques, sur quelques gouvernements de l’Europe … Neuchâtel, [Société Typographique,] 1779.
Three parts in one vol., as issued, 8vo, pp. [iv], 160, 145, [1] blank, 126, [2] blank; a good copy in contemporary marbled calf, a few small wormholes and light scuff-marks, marbled endpapers, spine gilt in compartments, with a gilt lettering-piece.
First edition of the first part of Albon’s Discours, containing three separate discourses on England, Holland and Switzerland, based on the author’s travels. Two further parts appeared in 1781 (Neuchâtel) and 1785 (‘Londres’), with sections on Italy, Spain and Portugal. ‘Je me propose … de tracer les principaux événements de l’Histoire, de montrer les bonnes & mauvaises qualités des Gouvernements, de faire connoître les Mœurs, les Usages, les Loix, la Population, l’Agriculture, le Commerce, les Finances, les Impôts, la Littérature & les Arts des Peuples que j’ai en vue’ (Avertissement).Camille d’Albon (1753–1789) was the very model of a liberal aristocrat of the pre-revolutionary period in France – philanthropist, agricultural improver, town planner, pamphleteer, minor politician, even lesser littérateur, and patron of the arts. He associated with the physiocrats, was an editor of Baudeau’s Nouvelles Éphémérides (1775–6), and wrote studies of Chamousset, Quesnay, and his close friend Court de Gebelin, as well as a number of pamphlets on agrarian reform and the present Discours politiques, his most notable work. ‘Doué d’un caractère étrange, démocrate entiché de sa noblesse, réformateur sans originalité, il fut parfaitement représentatif de cette génération de gentilshommes qui prépara la révolution tout en croyant étayer la monarchie’ (DBF).
INED 21 (two vols only); cf. Quérard I, 23; not in Einaudi, Goldsmiths’, or Kress.
£350
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