[CLÉMENT (Pierre)]. Les Fri-Maçons. Hyperdrama. London: J... - Lot 53

[CLÉMENT (Pierre)]. Les Fri-Maçons. Hyperdrama. London: J... T... in the Strand, 1740. In-8, marbled brown calf, ribbed spine with partitions and fleurons and garnet-red title, gilt roulette at spine and back, speckled edges (period binding). LES FRI-MAÇONS: iv-87-(5 of which the 1st and last are blank) pp; first and last pages soiled. - LES AUTRES PIÈCES. 1: (2)-46 pp. - 2: 46 pp. - 3: 24 pp. - 4: 112-(2 of which the second blank) pp. - 5: 54-(4 of which the last blank) pp. with an unpaginated leaf inserted between pp. 10 and 11 - 6: (2 of which the second blank)-34 pp. - 7: (2)-51-(one blank) pp. One of the first editions, published in 1740 at the address of Jacob Tonson. This is probably the true original, as its copies, as here, generally bear a handwritten correction to one of the poems added as an appendix, unlike copies of other editions where this correction was taken into account by the typesetters. ONE OF THE FIRST PIECES TO STAGE FRANCS-MAÇONS, it was banned from performance by the censors in 1737, but, according to Thory, was finally given in public in 1739. MEMBER OF THE 1734 CELEBRE LOGE DU LOUIS D'ARGENT, ASIDE MONTESQUIEU AND THE AMBASSADOR OF ENGLAND, PIERRE CLEMENT (1707-1770) was born in Geneva to an emigrant French Protestant father and a Swiss mother. He became a clergyman in 1732, and served for a time as tutor to the son of the English ambassador in Paris, but his pronounced taste for the theater earned him the disapproval of the Company of Pastors in Geneva, leading him to give up the pastoral ministry in 1740. He then lived from his pen as a publicist and literary critic in Paris, London and The Hague, publishing several plays and a periodical, Les Cinq années littéraires, which attracted numerous subscriptions from Europe's high nobility and intellectual circles. Having lost his mind, he sadly ended his life in Paris. BINDED WITH 7 OTHER THEATRE PIECES, all in in-8 plates: 1: GRESSET (Jean-Baptiste-Louis). Sidney, comédie. À La Haye, s.n., 1745. - 2: [SAINT-FOIX (Germain-François Poullain de)]. Les Grâces. Comédie en un acte. Paris, chez Prault fils, 1745. - 3: [SAINT-FOIX (Germain-François Poullain de)]. Julie ou l'Heureuse épreuve, a one-act prose comedy. À Paris, chez Prault fils, 1746. - 4: [VOISENON (Claude-Henri de Fusée de), Louis-Jules Mancini-Mazarini, duc de NIVERNOIS, and Charles-Antoine LE CLERC DE LA BRUERE]. La Coquette fixée, comedy in three acts in verse. Paris: Jacques Clousier, 1746. - 5: ROUSSEAU (Pierre). La Rivale suivante, comedy in one act in verse. Paris: Prault fils, 1747. - 6: [BRET (Antoine)]. L'École amoureuse, comedy in one act in verse. À Paris, chez Prault fils, 1748. Copper-engraved vignette to title, embossed inverted. - 7 : [BARAGUEY]. Aphos, comedy in one act and in verse. À Paris, chez Prault fils, 1748. Provenance: Philibert Bernard de La Vernette (copper-engraved armorial bookplate).