18th-century literary fraud about Joan of Arc. Published by the widow Delatour.
[Jean de Roussy, attrib.]. Aurélia ou Orléans délivré, poeme latin traduit en François. Paris: La veuve Delatour, Mérigot, and Prault fils, 1738. 12mo in 8s and 4s (2 sigs.) [16.2 x 9.3 cm], [6] ff., 389 pp. (pagination error skipping from 264 to 269 but complete), with woodcut title page device, headpieces, initials, and tailpieces. Bound in contemporary tan calf, spine elaborately gold tooled, gold-stamped morocco lettering piece laid to spine, board edges gilt ruled, marbled end papers, red edges, green silk ribbon bookmark. Minor rubbing and edge wear to binding. A few later pencil annotations to endpapers, internally quite clean.
Rare first edition of this fraudulent 18th-century ‘translation’ of a (non-existent) Latin epic poem about Joan of Arc’s heroism at the siege of Orléans, published in Paris by la veuve Delatour (née Anne-Marie Mérigot).
No author or translator is named in the pages of Aurélia ou Orléans délivré, poeme latin traduit en François—only later was it attributed to Jean de Roussy (1705-77)—but its supposed genesis is given in the “Avis du traducteur,” where the translator claims that an old man (“Un Homme de Lettres fort âgé”) long ago showed him his manuscript of neo-Latin epic poem about Joan of Arc’s actions at the siege and liberation of Orléans (1428-29) during the Hundred Year’s War. It took decades for the translator (“Jeune-homme”) to convince the old man that his work should be rendered in French. The ‘translator’ defends his decision to present the tale in French prose, saying that this both was required to smooth over the infelicities and lacunae of the Latin original and that French history should, after all, be in French.
The conceit is reinforced by the book’s approbation (signed by Danchet, 2 January 1738), which buttresses the fabrication by alluding to a supposed Latin original. To cement the fraud, the ‘translator’ appended to the work 5 pages in parallel columns showing ‘original’ Latin verse and its French translation. Contemporaries were not long fooled by the ruse, and today we must imagine that commercial considerations were behind the decision to link the authority of Latin epic poetry to the accessibility of the vernacular roman. (The first line of Aurélia ou Orléans délivré, “Je chante Orleans délivré de l’Armée Angloise qui tenoit assiegé,” easily recalls the Aeneid of Vergil and the Illiad of Homer.)
La veuve Delatour (née Anne-Marie Mérigot) (d. 1767) is alone named at the end of the privilege, but on the title page she shares billing with the establishments of François-Gabriel Mérigot [1700-84] and Louis-François Prault [1734-1806].) La veuve Delatour operated in the rue de la Harpe. She succeeded her husband, Louis-Denis, after his death in 1736.
OCLC locates U.S. examples of this title at Yale, Columbia, Harvard, UC Irvine, Minnesota, Johns Hopkins, and Bryn Mawr.
*J. M. Quérard, La France littéraire, p. 246; Catalogue des livres et documents imprimés du fonds lorrain de la bibliothèque municipale de Nancy, no. 3532; Journal des Sçavans, Nov. 1738, pp. 660-75; J. Barthélemy de Beauregard, Histoire de Jeanne d’Arc, d’après les chroniques contemporaines, p. 485; J. Le Long and C. M. Fevret de Fontette, Bibliothèque historique de la France, vol. 2, p. 182; J. M. Quérard and P. Gustave Brunet, Les supercheries littéraires dévoilées, vol. 1, p. 1.