Ministère de Travaux Publics]]> Pamphlets]]> Auguste Logerot]]> Books]]> Paris Impérial wrote: ‘Now that gas has reached the little streets of the big city, night truly is no more, because darkness has been banished.’ One who haunted the nocturnal delights of Paris was photographer Brassaï, real name Gyula Halász (1899–1984), who produced his Paris de Nuit (Paris by Night) in 1933. This work featured sixty images that depicted the darkest corners of Paris. As he stated: ‘My constant aim was to make people see an aspect of daily life as if they had discovered it for the first time.’ Here is his Notre-Dame from the windows on the Île Saint Louis, and a glimpse of the Boulevards at the Palace de l’Opéra.]]> Brassaï]]> Books]]> Gargantua and Pantagruel, which spewed forth from the pen of this doctor-monk between 1532 and 1564. The work was condemned by the Church and the faculty at the Sorbonne in Paris. Rabelais’s unique literary legacy is without peer.]]> François Rabelais]]> Books]]> Elémens des Mathématiques is a pivotal work that encapsulates the progress of knowledge, and immortalises France’s contribution to the mathematical world. Prestet’s decisive rejection of geometry in favour of modern algebra was indicative of a societal move towards the knowledge of modernity. Elémens crucially includes a proof of Descartes’ rule of signs, with this revised and expanded edition providing early modern work on the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, as first indicated by Euclid in c. 300 BC.]]> Jean Prestet]]> Books]]> Astrolabe from 1826 to 1829. He and his crew spent a great deal of time in the South Pacific, especially New Zealand. Some of the specimens collected on this voyage are still in the Natural History Museum in Paris.]]> Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d'Urville]]> Books]]> Médée, Pierre Corneille's first true tragedy, produced in 1635.]]> Pierre Corneille]]> Books]]> Madame Déficit because of her infamous spending habits, she was one of the catalysts of the French Revolution, which ultimately led to the bloody downfall of the French dynastic line.]]> Antonia Fraser]]> Books]]> Le Spleen de Paris (or Petits Poèmes en prose) were written as a ‘pendant’, a completion of his more famous Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), published in 1857. Published posthumously in 1869, they intended to capture ‘the beauty of life in the modern city’ with subjects urban: an old woman; a dog; windows, mistresses; poor people hanging around eateries. In his preface to this limited edition, Aleister Crowley, the translator, calls Baudelaire (1821–1867) ‘the most divine, the most spiritually minded, of all French thinkers.’ Baudelaire’s ‘modernity’ influenced a whole generation of writers: Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé; he remains an important French poet.]]> Charles Baudelaire]]> Books]]> Mrs Charles Stothard (Anna Eliza Bray)]]> Books]]> Collected Works, is one of some 20,000 written over a long literary career. The letter is to Dresden printer Georg Conrad Walther concerning his own Le Siècle de Louis XIV (The Age of Louis XIV), of 1751. It was first published in the journal AUMLA (November 1965) by R. G. Stone, a former Professor of French at the University of Otago.]]> Voltaire]]> Manuscripts]]> Voltaire]]> Manuscripts]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> La Ville Lumière: in part for its crucial role in the Enlightenment.]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> Nicholas Tassin]]> Engravings]]> La légende dorée, a French translation of Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea sanctorum. This was the first book printed in the French language. Importantly, it was executed in Lyon, the one city that rivalled Paris in the burgeoning print industry in France. The town boasted such masters as Johann Treschel; Johann Klein; Sebastian Greyff, and type designers like Robert Granjon. One 16th century printer was Benoist Rigaud, famed for printing Les Propheties by Nostradamus in 1568. Here is a less controversial publication, the works of Philippe Desportes (1546-1606), a courtier poet famed for sonnets and elegies; many in an imitative Italian style.]]> Philippe Desportes]]> Books]]> Les Belles Heures du Duc de Berry, perhaps one of the most famous Book of Hours in the world. Dutch painters Herman, John and Paul Limbourg were commissioned by John of Berry (1340-1416), a superb patron of the arts, to create this beautiful work. It was completed by another artist and Jean Colombe in 1485. The manuscript is now in The Cloisters library in New York. Just two of the 94 full-page illuminations are on display: the ‘Adoration of the Magi’ and ‘Flight into Egypt’.]]> [Jean Colombe]]]> Books]]> Jodelet, ou le Maître Valet (Jodelet, or the Valet as Master, 1645) and Roman Comique (1651-1657), which is regarded as his best work. In his own day, his Virgile Travesti (1648-1653), a parody of the Aeneid, was highly regarded. This elegant production of 1655, with its engraved frontispiece, reflects something of its past standing. Today this satiric ‘travesty’ is little read.]]> Paul Scarron]]> Books]]>