EXCEEDINGLY RARE VIE PRIVÉE OF MARIE-ANTOINETTE, 1792-3, INTENSELY CONTROVERSIAL, ISSUED DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION,WITH 32 ENGRAVED PLATES, MOST LICENTIOUS, ATTACKING THE QUEEN, HER COURT AND THE MONARCHY

(MARIE ANTOINETTE) ANONYMOUS. Vie Privée, Libertine et Scandaleuse de Marie-Antoinette D’Autriche. Paris: Château des Tuilleries, 1792. [Three parts]. BOUND WITH: Vie Privée, Libertine et Scandaleuse de Marie-Antoinette D’Autriche… Nouvelle Édition, augmentée d’un troisième volume. Paris: Au Palais de la Révolution, 1793. Together in one volume. 12 mo (3-1/2 by 5-1/4 inches), modern full crushed violet morocco, raised bands, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.

1792-3 Vie Privée, Libertine et Scandaleuse de Marie-Antoinette, issued anonymously in Paris at the height of the French Revolution as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned, then executed, one of the rarest and most highly controversial works of the era, complete with 32 full-page engravings, many sexually explicit, bound in full crushed morocco by Wood of London.

This extraordinarily rare work, published in the two years during which Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were arrested and executed, contains 32 engraved plates, many sexually explicit, portraying Marie-Antoinette as a woman whose wild, unbridled desires sparked revolution. As queen, she “was the first in France to live at a time when pamphlets and newspapers and other forms of print publicity were ready to … manufacture news if necessary to satisfy an avid reading public newly introduced to the thrills of court scandals and revolutionary politics.” Fueling that appetite were rumors about the marriage of Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette. “By the time her first child was born in 1778, doubts about the king’s virility and the queen’s sexuality and fidelity were firmly planted in the public mind, to be nurtured and exploited to the political advantage of disgruntled couriers, rival factions, revolutionaries, and republicans… With the coming of the Revolution in 1789, the floodgates opened, and a number of pamphlets attacking the queen rapidly rose in number. These took various forms, ranging from songs and fables to presumed biographies, confessions and plays”—many openly attacking her sexuality (Goodman, Marie Antoinette, 3-6, 127). Most rare, almost no copies found complete with 32 engraved plates (including frontispiece of Marie-Antoinette). Anonymously issued. Vie Privée (1792) in three parts is the second edition of the 1791 two-volume La Cour de Louis XVI dévoilée, a violent libel against Marie-Antoinette. Bound with first edition of the third part of Nouvelle Édition: issued to augment the first two volumes of the 1792 Nouvelle Édition (not present): containing both title page variants: Vie, Vie Privée. Of this exceptional volume’s 32 engraved plates, 26 plates are erotic or directly relate to the text, and six relate to the the events of the French Revolution. Text in French. Peyrefitte 254. Pia Enger, 1516. Title pages with early owner signatures. Faintest trace of effaced inscription to frontispiece without affecting plate. Bookplate.

Text and plates clean and fresh, minimal scattered foxing mainly to blank preliminary and terminal leaves, occasional lightest expert archival repair to margins. A highly desirable about-fine copy.