Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni - Lettres de My-Lord Rivers, à Sir Charles Cardigan - 1777

RICCOBONI, Marie-Jeanne.
Lettres de My-Lord Rivers, à Sir Charles Cardigan, entremêlées d'une partie de ses correspondances à Londres pendant son séjour en France. Première Partie.
Paris: Chez Humblot, Bookseller, 1777.
1 volume, 12mo (approx. 16.5 × 10 cm), first part only (of a complete edition in several volumes). Contemporary full marbled calf binding with superb mottled tones, smooth spine decorated with gilt panels and tools, red morocco title label with the gilt inscription “LETTRE / DE MY / RIVERS”.

Authentic and elegant contemporary full calf. The smooth spine is richly decorated with floral tools and gilt rolls typical of the second half of the 18th century. Moderate wear to the headcaps and corners; joints sound. Original tinted or speckled edges. Clean copy on contemporary laid paper, enhanced by an elegant engraved headpiece vignette at the beginning of the first chapter.

First edition of 1777 (published the same year as the first edition by the same bookseller, Humblot) of this successful epistolary novel by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (1713–1792). A former actress who became one of the most widely read and admired women writers of Enlightenment Europe, Madame Riccoboni excelled at analyzing delicate feelings and the psychology of love through the epistolary form, then much in vogue in the age of Rousseau and Richardson.