[GAUTIER DE FAGET (Jean)]. Relation apologique et historique - Lot 63

[GAUTIER DE FAGET (Jean)]. Relation apologique et historique de la Société des Franc-Maçons, by J. G. D. M. F. M. [Jean Gautier Docteur Médecin Franc-Maçon]. Dublin: Patrice Odonoko, 1738. Small in-8, paperback, in antique cover. 92-(4 blank) pp. FIRST EDITION. IRONIC RESPONSE TO THE CRITICISMS BROUGHT AGAINST FRANC MASONRY, notably those of René Hérault, Inspector of the Judicial Police, who in December 1737 published a disclosure of Masonic secrets with the aim of ridiculing them, presenting them as burdened with prejudice and founded on erroneous sources. The present Relation, which defends English Masonry in its deistic, academic and Epicurean form, was the only Masonic publication to be blacklisted in 1739. It also appeared the same year in the Luxembourg periodical La Clef du cabinet. A DOCTOR TRAINED IN PARIS, JEAN GAUTIER DE FAGET, who wrote this account after Jean Sgard, led a wandering life in Europe. In London in the 1720s, he frequented French Protestant scholars linked to the Freemasons, and met Abbé Prévost, whom he followed to the United Provinces as his secretary. He then resumed a wandering life, his presence being attested in Paris in 1738-1740, where he probably published the present Relation under the fictitious address of Dublin. Provenance: Swedish Academy of Sciences (19th-century copper-engraved bookplate); then G. von Maack bookshop in Kiel, Germany.