8vo. 143pp, [1]. With half-title. Contemporary Victorian spanish calf, gilt. Slightly rubbed, with the vast majority of the original morocco lettering-piece to spine lost; the top edge/corners of both boards heavily bumped. Marbled endpapers. Richard Ford's copy, with his signed armorial bookplate to FEP, inscribed 'Rich. Ford 1853' to head of half-title, above a seven line bio-bibliographical note, which references that 'excellent pamphlet was prohibited in France'. Pencilled note referencing that this work was 'Reviewed by Rich. Ford in the "Literary Gazette" april 2. 1853' to head of title, occasional annotations in the same hand to margins of text.

English travel writer and hispanophile Richard Ford's copy (1796-1858) of a well-regarded biography, by the French man of letters Jules Maurel (c.1806/7-1854), of the Duke of Wellington recently dispersed from Long Court, Randwick, Glocestershire.

As is noted to the head of the title by a descendant of Ford (presumably a grandchild), this work was reviewed, alongside the English translation published in the same year, by him in a detailed and praiseworthy two-page article in the Literary Gazette (April 2nd, 1853). Included in that review (and indeed alluded to in a manuscript note to the half-title of this volume) is a choice comment on the attempts to ban this work in France: 'It is not likely that M. Maurel's truthful exposition of a character so little underwood or appreciate in France will contribute to dispel the cloud of mystification that has been long systematically hung over the country, since already every copy has been stopped at the frontier, by a cordon ever vigilant to prevent the disturbance, by unwelcome truths, of the fool's paradise of self-satisfied ignorance which the Bonapartist system has always encouraged'.