Descripción
Bound with: Le Secretaire des Dames et des Messieurs, ou D?positaire fid?le & discret, et ? double usage. Paris: Desnos, [s.d.] 24mo (112 x 55 mm). Muses: [3]-96 pp. (without the series half-title, included in a few copies). Double thick-and-thin rule page borders throughout. Engraved frontispiece and 12 plates, of which four avant la lettre. S?cr?taire: 48 pp.; [12] pp. calendar for 1789. Light foxing to a couple of plates, else fine. Contemporary red morocco, sides with triple gilt fillet panel, smooth spine gold-tooled in compartments, the second with green morocco gilt lettering-piece, board edges with three-part sleeve for a stylus, the original stylus preserved, blue endpapers, gilt edges (light spotting to lower cover). Provenance: the S?cr?taire with contemporary annotations of gaming scores, and a few pen trials, and final note "Mademoiselle minette mechante."*** a fine copy of a classic almanach galant, issued by Louis-Charles Desnos (1725-1805), an innovative publisher of almanacs, maps and globes, who signed his imprints as "engineer-geographer, and bookseller to his Danish Majesty." Desnos had originally published this and 11 other almanacs in ca. 1780-1785 as part of an unillustrated series of chansonniers with the general title Anacr?on en belle humeur, but, perhaps because he was left with sufficient unsold sheets, he then reissued the parts as individual almanacs, with additional bells and whistles: not quite naughty engravings, a calendar, and the interactive S?cr?taire with its tables for recording one's accounts, accompanied by a stylus, to be used on his special, erasable "Papier nouveau." (Other than the rule borders, pages 6-13 of the S?cr?taire are blank except for the days of the week, and pp. 40-48 completely blank.) This is one of two editions with the same plates; the other was entirely engraved (cf. Grand-Carteret 752). The S?cr?taire, a combination date book, account book, and jotting pad, with its special paper and accompanying stylus, was kept constantly in print to accompany Desnos's almanacs. He first conceived of this gimmick ca. 1770, when he published a S?cr?taire des Dames, soon followed by a S?cr?taire des Messieurs, and then, inevitably, to simplify matters, by a co-ed version, used in most of his later almanacs. As explained in the titles, the paper was "new" because one could write on it with a "Stylet de mineral," and it was ?conomique because it could be erased up to 15 to 20 times, with a damp sponge. Desnos's innovation was ruthlessly plagiarized by his main competitor, Jean-Pierre Jubert, who claimed to have invented his own paper, which was printed as part of a N?c?ssaire, bound with his own almanacs. Other than its name, Jubert's version was virtually identical to Desnos's S?cr?taire. In this edition the recto of the S?cr?taire title-page (which is on a verso) bears an interesting note from the publisher, advising readers to compare the many imitations of his almanacs to the real thing, adding that the calendars of his almanacs can be changed every year without added expense. "Le Militaire, l'Homme de Robe, le Financier, le N?gociant, le Voyageur, l'Artiste, les Amateurs de la Loterie Royale de France [an interesting inclusion], . les Peres et Meres, & autres Personnes charg?es de l'?ducation des Enfans," all can derive benefits from his almanacs, of which he has published a full catalogue. The BnF's Catalogue de libraires, 1473-1810 lists 20 stock catalogues by Desnos from 1768 to 1788, all of which include almanacs, and a dozen of which explicitly mention almanacs in their titles. Cf. Grand-Carteret 752 & 626 and, on the S?cr?taire, 489; Cohen-de Ricci col. 60. N° de ref. del artículo 4250
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