330 - HAMILTON (Count Antoine)

HAMILTON (Count Antoine) Histoire de Fleur d'Epine, tale. Paris, Jean Fr. Josse, 1730. In-12 of (2) ff. 275-(1) p. ; brown calf, spine decorated with fleur-de-lys (period binding). First edition. (Gumuchian, 2930; Tchemerzine III, 658; Dufrenoy I-50, Picot, Rothschild Catalogue, n°1737). This tale was written by Hamilton to show the ladies of the Court, then infatuated with the 'Thousand and One Nights', that such implausible stories could be composed. This explains the extravagance of the story. The leaf following the title contains a notice to the effect that the public reception of the 'Tale of Aries' has determined the bookseller to carefully research the works composed by Hamilton for the amusement of his sister, the Duchess de Gramont. "A French writer born in Ireland around 1646, Hamilton moved to France with his family after the death of Charles I to escape revolutionary vengeance against loyal royalists. It was there that he was educated; but in 1660, at the age of 14, he returned to England, when the Prince of Wales, under the name of Charles II, was restored to the throne of the Stuarts, and was able to complete his French education in a court that spoke our language very well [...] It is with justice that Voltaire placed him in his 'Temple du Goût' [...]. By a piquant singularity, it is Hamilton, a foreigner, who, after Voltaire, presents perhaps the most accurate image of the French spirit."