Rare Portuguese translation of Isabelle de Montolieu’s 'Caroline de Lichtfield.'
By the first translator of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion into French.
[Isabelle de Montolieu]. Carolina de Lichtfield, ou o Triunfo da Virtude, Publicado pelo Traductor de Werther. Trasladado do Francez para o Portuguez. Lisboa: Na Offic. de Simão Thadeo Ferreira, 1802. 8vo [14.0 x 8.8 cm], 2 volumes, 402 pp. and 354 pp, with woodcut headpieces and initials. Bound in contemporary calf, spines gold tooled with C.A.M monograms, lettering piece laid to spines. Rubbing and edge wear to spines and boards, small loss to upper extremity of spine of vol. 2, upper joint of vol. 2 tender. Stamp (C.A.M.) on first and last pages of both volumes, Inscription (C.o M.a) on both title pages, Aiii-Avi of vol. 1 loosening, the occasional old mend, occasional minor staining.
Very rare (1 copy worldwide) 1802 (second) edition of the Portuguese translation of Isabelle de Montolieu’s (1751-1832) novel Caroline de Lichtfield, ou Mémoires d’une Famille Prussienne (1786), “an international bestseller in its heyday … a light-hearted novel of sentiment that draws liberally on anti-mimetic genres such as heroic romance, pastoral and even fairytale” (Kirkley, p. xi), and a work known to the English-speaking world primarily through the dramatist-poet Thomas Holcroft’s (1745-1809) 1786 translation. Mary Wollstonecraft, Anna Seward, Anna Barbauld, Germaine de Staël and Maria Edgeworth are among those who expressed their admiration for Caroline de Lichtfield (Kirkley, p. xi-xiii). The first Portuguese-language edition (1790) is as rare as the second edition offered here (1 copy worldwide).
Isabelle de Montolieu penned several novels in addition to Caroline de Lichtfield, but she is best remembered for her numerous translations into French, including Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811) (Raison et Sensibilité, ou Les Deux Manières d’Aimer [1815]) and Persuasion (1817) (La Famille Elliot, ou L’Ancienne Inclination [1821]). Johann David Wyss’s (1743-1818) Swiss Family Robinson (Der Schweizerische Robinson [1812]) became known to the wider world largely through Montolieu’s French translation (Le Robinson suisse, ou, Journal d'un père de famille, naufragé avec sa femme et ses enfans [1816]).
OCLC, KVK and PORBASE locate 1 copy of the first 1790 first edition of the Portuguese translation from the press of Ferreira (Toronto) and 1 copy of this 1802 second Ferreira edition (Bibliothèque nationale de France). Moizeis Sobreira de Sousa records that Queen Carlota Joaquina (1775-1830) possessed a copy of the 1802 edition, the second volume of which still survives at the Biblioteca da Ajuda (p. 25).
* Laura Kirkley, ed., Isabelle de Montolieu, Caroline of Lichtfield; Alvaro Manuel Machado, Les romantismes au Portugal: modèles étrangers et orientations nationales, p. 61; Moizeis Sobreira de Sousa, “Catálogo da biblioteca da rainha D. Carlota Joaquina,” História (São Paulo), vol 38 (2019), pp. 1-110.