Vadé - Œuvres - 1785

VADÉ, Jean-Joseph.
Works of Vadé. [Included in: Petite Bibliothèque des Théâtres]. Paris, At the Office of the Petite Bibliothèque des Théâtres (rue des Moulins), 1785.
1 volume, 16mo. Contemporary full mottled calf, smooth spine decorated with gilt floral motifs, black morocco title label, speckled edges. Illustrated with a handsome engraved frontispiece portrait of Jean-Joseph Vadé and enriched with engraved musical scores. (Minor signs of wear, a very fine copy).

Charming illustrated edition of the works of the celebrated songwriter and poet from Poitou, featuring a portrait of the author, who was born in Ham in 1720 and died in Paris in 1767. Jean-Joseph Vadé has gone down in literary history as the undisputed inventor of the fishwife style. Tired of staid conventions and high classical tragedy, he decided to bring to the stage and into his poetry the colorful, slang-filled, exuberant language of the Paris market women. Voltaire himself jokingly called him the “poet of the rabble,” paradoxically helping to turn this popular speech into a fashionable literary subject in the salons of the late eighteenth century.