Madame Du N** (Du Noyer) - Mémoires de Madame Du N** (Du Noyer), Ecrits par elle-même. - 1710

Memoirs of Madame Du N** (Du Noyer, born in Nîmes in 1663, died in Holland in 1719), Written by herself. In Cologne at Pierre Marteau, 1710. Complete in 5 volumes. Original edition rare, noted by Quérard as one volume; it originally consisted of 3 volumes, the other two were published one after the other in the same year.
Rare forgotten work, fascinating testimony of an anonymous Protestant bourgeois of the 18th century forced to exile after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Born into the Calvinist bourgeoisie of Nîmes, very early an orphan of her mother, then abandoned by her father, she is raised by a maternal aunt who ensures a careful education. Rather than apostatizing, she goes into exile for the first time in 1686, immediately after the revocation, alone; at 23 she reaches Geneva, then Holland, under a rocambolesque set of circumstances.
Written and published from 1703 to 1710 in 5 volumes, these Memoirs, resembling a novelistic autobiography, constitute a rare testimony: that of a French Protestant forced into exile in Holland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Unlike the great memorialists of her time, Madame Du Noyer is an anonymous figure whose grand History profoundly affected her life. Gifted with real talent as a feuilletonist, she writes to survive, recounting with forceful detail the episodes of a tumultuous life, while not failing to evoke the misfortune of the Calvinist community persecuted by Louis XIV. Never reissued since its publication, this tale of a free woman’s adventures, likely the first Frenchwoman journalist of the late 17th century, is also a violent critique of Louis XIV’s policy. Meticulous description of daily life in Europe and of the Protestant diaspora in Holland, this text also seeks to demystify certain great heroes of Protestantism.
TEXT: 3 frontespieces, 404 pp., 5 volumes.
TI: 3 frontispieces, 437 pp., [1] Printer’s notice to the reader. 4 frontispieces.
TIII: 1 frontispiece, 438 pp., 3 frontispieces.
TIV: 1 frontispiece, 398 pp. 1 frontispiece.
TV: 1 frontispiece, 453 pp., 1 frontispiece.
14x8 cm, 1.5 kg (including packaging).
Binding (publisher, period) in brown calf leather, spine with 5 raised bands guilloché, frames of dotted lines and gilt irons in the panels, title piece and volume number in green and red morocco, frames of dotted lines and gilt cornerpieces on the boards; gilt edges on the guards and red edges.
Wear, usage wear on corners (dulled, slightly abraded) and borders, some joints slightly split at the head and tail (not serious), a few small leather chips at the head and tail of the spine; boards with slight scuffs and handling stains (without consequence). Interior satisfactory, volumes well preserved with 5
engraved frontispieces (one engraving in each volume) after Schouten, Coster..