8vo. In two volumes. [2], xxxii, 484; [2], 571pp, [1]. Recent navy cloth, lettered in gilt. Very minor wear to extremities. Recent bookplate, ink shelf marks, and paper slips of the Bath Municipal Reference Library to blank fly-leaves, with their occasional embossed stamps throughout, neat ink annotation to Vol. I title, lightly foxed.

Charles Pinot Duclos (1704-1772) penned this history of the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV following his appointment as French historiographer, a position made vacant with the retirement of Voltaire. The work, based upon the Memoires of Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon which had been suppressed in 1755, would not be printed until after the initial turmoil of the French Revolution, presumably in an attempt to profit from anti-monarchist sentiment in the nation.