Anonyme - Voltariana ou Éloges amphigouriques - 1748

First edition of this collection of libels against Voltaire, containing texts by Voltaire.

Voltariana or Ridiculing Praises of Fr. Marie Arrouet
Sir Voltaire, Gentleman Ordinary, King's Counselor in his councils, Historian of France, etc., etc., etc., discussed and decided upon for his reception at the Académie Française
Paris: (sn), 1748
[10]-559-[1] pp
Period-style full calf binding (18x11 cm; spine cracked), creases and browning pages, first leaves detached; fine ex-libris label (‘Marie-Rose Corbusier – The extremes touch me’ by F. Sevrin 1963)

This work cannot be attributed to the abbé Desfontaines, who died in 1745, nor to the abbé Guillaume-André-René Baston (1741-1825), author of the ‘Voltairimeros’ (1779). The attribution adopted by Barbier, Quérard and Beuchot, to Louis Travenol (1698-1783) and to Louis Mannory (1696-1777), whose lawyer he was in his suit with Voltaire, is a suggestion proposed by P.-X. Leschevin in the edition of the ‘Chef-d'œuvre d'un inconnu’ (1807, vol. 2, pp. 417-418), concerning works falsely attributed to Thémiseul de Saint-Hyacinthe.

Contains from Voltaire: Epistle to La Noue, author of Mahomet II; Epistle to Princess Ulrique of Prussia; Quatrains of a man who had the misfortune to be 47; Letter to Father de La Tour, February 7, 1746; The bog, a satire (Voltaire’s speech pronounced on the day of his reception into the Académie française).

Among the other pieces: Portrait of Voltaire, the Voltairomanie, the Travenol Affair, etc.

The dedicatory epistle is signed: Timorowitz Ablabew, a pseudonym of Mannory.