Castilhon - Le mendiant boiteux - 1771

CASTILHON, Jean-Louis
Le Mendiant Boiteux, ou les Aventures d'Ambroise Gwinett, balayeur du pavé de Spring-Garden. D'après des notes écrites de sa main.
Bouillon, at the expense of the Société Typographique, 1771. Two parts in one volume, 12mo, contemporary temporary paper-covered boards (paper, blank spine), smooth edges. New, revised and corrected edition.

A captivating 1771 edition printed by the celebrated and audacious Société Typographique de Bouillon. This picaresque, dramatic novel recounts the incredible fate of Ambroise Gwinett, who swings between the highest favors of fortune and the deepest abysses of misfortune. A testament to popular literature and tales of extraordinary travels so prized during the Enlightenment, the work retains its modest, authentic contemporary board binding, bearing witness to its unaltered condition.

The story of Ambroise Gwinett is inspired by an authentic and terrifying English judicial case: wrongly accused of a murder he did not commit, Gwinett survives a botched hanging before being sent to the galleys, enduring terrible shipwrecks, being captured by pirates, and eventually ending up... as a street sweeper in London, only to chance upon the very man he had been accused of murdering!

This wildly eventful tale held a lasting fascination for eighteenth-century European novelists because of its scathing criticism of the flaws in the justice system.