[LANGEAC (Égide de Lespinasse de)]. English and American ane - Lot 42

[LANGEAC (Égide de Lespinasse de)]. English and American anecdotes. Years 1776 to 1783. Paris, Delaunay, Brunot-Labbé, 1813. 2 volumes in-8, (4 of which the last is blank)-301-(one blank)-4 (erroneously numbered 295 to 298) + (4 of which those on the verso are blank)-324 pp, dark green half-chagrin, spine ribbed with flowers; spotting in the upper margins (modern binding). FIRST EDITION. COLLECTION OF ANECDOTES PAINTING THE ENGLISH IN THE DARKEST COLORS, taken from various publications of the late Ancien Régime: books by Saint-John de Crèvecoeur, Ramsay, and the periodical Le Courrier de l'Europe. One chapter includes variants of the satirical pamphlet La Vente des Hessois, a pro-American text directed against the German troops serving England during the Revolutionary War, originally published in the Correspondance littéraire secrète (Neuwied, 1777), and once attributed to Benjamin Franklin. CHEVALIER DE MALTE EMPLOYEE IN THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS, ÉGIDE DE LANGEAC (1748-1839) was exiled after the coup d'état of 1795 against the royalists, and returned under the Consulate: for a time secretary to the Grand Master of the Imperial University, Louis de Fontanes, he was appointed Conseiller ordinaire de l'Université in 1811.