[MIRABEAU (Honoré Gabriel Riquetti de)]. Histoire secrète de - Lot 97

[MIRABEAU (Honoré Gabriel Riquetti de)]. Histoire secrète de la Cour de Berlin, ou Correspondance d'un voyageur françois, depuis le 5 juillet 1786, jusqu'au 19 janvier 1787. Rotterdam, s.n., 1789. 2 volumes. - LUCHET (Jean-Pierre-Louis de). Essai sur la secte des Illuminés. Paris, s.n., 1789. - All bound in one volume, in-8, fawn half-calf with corners, smooth spine with partitions and fleurons, decorated with gilt irons with Masonic motifs, dark green title page, gilt fillet on leather edges, marbled edges (19th-century English binding). (4 of which the 2nd and 4th are blank)-viii-137 [numbered 3 to 139]-(one blank)-(4 of which the 2nd and 4th are blank)-148-(4 of which the 2nd and 4th are blank)-xv-(one blank)-127-(one blank) pp.; top cover and corners rubbed. Edition produced in two parts: the 2 volumes of Histoire secrète de Mirabeau were first printed on white paper, and illustrated with 2 copper-engraved portrait-frontispices outside the text. They were then joined by Jean-Pierre-Louis de Luchet's Essai sur la secte des Illuminés, printed on azure paper in an additional volume. This Essay was given its own title leaf, but preceded by a faux-title leaf designating it as Volume III of the Histoire secrète. It was on this occasion that the false title and title leaves of the first two volumes of the Histoire secrète were renewed in print on the same azure paper. Luchet's work, which went through several editions in 1789, appears here in its original edition, according to Fesch (col. 870-871). A DENUNCIATION OF THE ILLUMINES DE BAVIERE. Although this essay confuses the "perfectibilism" of Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminés of Bavaria, with the mystical illuminism of Martinez, it met with great success. Marquis Jean-Pierre Louis de Luchet (1739-1792) was probably a Jesuit at first, then a caavlerie officer before devoting himself to literature. A member of several learned societies and a protégé of Choiseul for a time, he spent a few months with Voltaire in 1775, then entered the service of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel and Prince Henry of Prussia, before settling in Paris in 1788. Provenance: the artillery officer and member of the Royal Society, Henry Clerk, 33rd (ex-dono ex-libris), then Supreme Council of the 33rd of London (ex-libris vignettes).