Susanne Schulz-Falster Catalogue Ten

identiWes ‘fancy’ coaches and carriages as one of the more visible signs of
luxury. He condemns luxury as the ‘lack of balance between exuberance and
want, and maintains that it causes idleness in a large section of the population
and weakens the national spirit.
The book was reprinted together with a number of other pieces in his
‘Paradoxes’, 1775.
Cioranescu 22814; Contades, Le Driving en France, 69; ESTC t112982.
91 DIDEROT, Denis. Jakob und sein Herr, aus Diderots
ungedrucktem Nachlasse. Erster Theil [– Zweiter Theil]. Berlin,
J. F. Unger, 1792. £2250
Two volumes 8vo, engraved frontispiece, pp. [ii], 330, [2]; 339;
circular title vignette to volume one; some light foxing to Wrst two
leaves, else very clean; printed on ‘papier velin’; entirely uncut in the
susanne schulz-falster rare books catalogue ten
original marbled paper stiV wrappers, some creases to spine, joints
repaired; a very Wne copy on special paper.
First edition, very rare, of Diderot’s Jacques le Fataliste, Wrst published in this
German translation, with the French version not printed until 1796. It is
Diderot’s last novel, published posthumously and clearly inspired by
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, which it resembles in the subordination of narrative
to digression. It is an entirely modern novel, a novel about authority
and ‘mastery’, a Wction about the telling of Wctions. Its climax is a great quarrel
in which Jacques, the insubordinate servant and teller of stories, establishes
his predominance and mastery for all time.
Around the central story-line of Jacques’ humorous narration of his romantic
aVairs, the author of the Encyclopédie presents a major work of innovative
Wction, that investigates philosophical and literary questions, such
as art, time, reality, freedom and the deWnition of the novel itself. The book
foreshadows major developments in the nineteenth and twentieth century
literary techniques, exchanging the rational and classical for shifting perspectives
of time, personality, and viewpoint.
Curiously the volumes were issued unstitched, held together just by the
stiV wrappers, which were glued to the spine. Jacques le Fataliste, though
quite common in the later French version, is a very rare book indeed, in the
original German translation.
Adams JF19; Fromm 7194; RLIN and OCLC list copies at Harvard and Yale only;
not in Borst; see Raddatz, ZEIT Bibliothek der 100 Bücher pp. 136–139.
Uncut in Wrappers – as Issued
92 [DIDEROT, Denis.] Pensés Philosophiques. Amsterdam,
1772. £220
8vo in 8s and 4s, pp. 90; title page vignette; uncut in the original blue
wrappers, spine very worn, with small portion missing at foot of spine,
corners bent; a wide-margined copy.
Later edition of Diderot’s brilliant Wrst independent publication, Wrst published
in 1746, which is full of eminently quotable epigrams in the tradition
of Pascal or La Rochefoucauld, such as ‘It can be required of me that I look
for the truth, but not that I should Wnd it’ (XXIX). The Pensées demonstrate
the existence of God through the order of nature. However, of all the
philosophico-religious positions presented in this work, scepticism is argued
most persuasively, and can be seen as Diderot’s chosen position at the
time. The work made a considerable impact and earned the compliment of
being condemned to be burned by the Paris Parlement, as ‘presenting to
restless and reckless spirits the venom of the most criminal opinions that the
depravity of human reason is capable of’. It became one of the most popular
of Diderot’s works, and went through no fewer than eighteen editions during
the eighteenth century. This separately issued volume formed part of
the Wrst collected edition of Diderot’s works.
For Wrst edition see Tchemerzine IV, p. 427; separate issue of one part from the
Wrst collected edition of Diderot’s works.