Mémoires sur la derniere guerre de l'Amérique septentrionale, entre La France et l'Angleterre. Suivis d'Observations, dont plusieurs sont relatives au théatre actuel de la guerre, & de nouveaux détails sur les mœurs & les usages des Sauvages, avec des cartes topographiques. Par M. Pouchot, Chevalier de l'Ordre Royal & Militaire de St. Louis, ancien Capitaine au Régiment de Béarn, Commandant des forts de Niagara & de Lévis, en Canada. Tome premier (-second -troisieme)
THE KEET SET, WITH DECKLED EDGES
Three volumes. Yverdon: [Fortunato Bartolomeo de Felice], 1781. First edition.
Duodecimo (6 15/16” x 4 1/8”, 176mm x 105mm).
Vol. I: binder’s blank, a12 b10 (b10 blank) A-G12 H6 I2, binder’s blank [$6 signed; –a1, a2]. 114 leaves, pp. i-v (half-title, blank, title, blank, preface) vj-xlj, 3 blanks; 1 2-184.
Vol. II: binder’s blank, π2 A-M12 N10, binder’s blank [$6 signed]. 156 leaves, pp. [4] (half-title, blank, title, blank), 1 2-308.
Vol. III: binder’s blank, π2 A-P12 Q10 [$6 signed]. 192 leaves, pp. [4] (half-title, blank, title, blank), 1-3 4-379, [1] (approbation). With three folding engraved maps.
Bound in modern quarter calf over green paste-paper by The Harcourt Bindery (signed at the verso of the front free end-paper of each volume). On the spine, title, number and author gilt to red morocco. All edges of the text-block untrimmed.
Losses to the lower fore-corners of II.G2 and III.C8, not affecting the text. Very scattered mild tanning. A wonderfully crisp, tall, tight set. Manuscript notations in red ink to the final map (“Carte des Frontieres Françoises, et Angloises.” With the bookplate of Ernest Keet (inv. no. 17375) to the front free end-paper of each volume.
Pierre Pouchot de Maupas (1710–1769) was a French military engineer who served in French Canada (Nouvelle France) during the Seven Years’ War (guerre des sept ans) — the global military struggle between, principally, France and Great Britain. The French and Indian War, as it is usually called in Anglophone literature, was concurrent and is set in the American theater. Pouchot was posted first to Fort Frontenac (earlier called Fort Cataraqui) — opposite Fort Oswego — and then to Fort Niagara, whose design he improved vastly, where he served as the first French officer to serve as commandant. He then went on to modernize the defenses at Montreal and at Fort Carillon (later known as Fort Ticonderoga).
The Seven Years’ War marks the apogee of France’s empire in the Western hemisphere; at the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France’s territorial holdings were reduced, in essence, to the Caribbean — valuable sources of sugar — while giving up Louisiana and New France to the Spanish and British, respectively (though it would regain the former in 1800, just in time for Napoleon to sell it to America in 1803). Pouchot’s account of the war, though published posthumously and some 18 years after the war’s end, is its principal treatment in French. Its publication in 1781 came in the full flower of France’s war of revenge, carried out by proxy through the Americans. The maps, which benefitted from an engineer’s familiarity with the terrain, would have been useful during the Revolutionary War as well.
The manuscript notations to the third map — principally along the Saint Lawrence — are almost identical to those in the Jean R. Perrette copy (his sale, Christie’s New York, 5 April 2016, lot 379) suggesting, perhaps, a correction made by the publisher.[1] The set is otherwise profoundly untouched, with its deckled edges — and therefore superb margins, 12mm x 7mm larger than the Perrette copy, quite significant in a duodecimo volume — doubtless contributing to its appeal to Ernest E. Keet, from whose landmark sale of Canadiana (Christie’s New York, 17 January 2024) the present item was acquired (lot 70), in benefit of his Cloudsplitter Foundation.
Howes P 516; Sabin 64707.
[1] A seemingly unexplored furrow of research. Perret identified the publisher as Fortunato Bartolomeo de Felice of Yverdon in Switzerland (Les imprimeries d’Yverdon au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle. Lausanne, 1945)
Item #JLR0581
Price: $15,000