La Pucelle d’Orléans (‘The Virgin of Orléans’), experienced visions of saints from a young age. These compelled her to fervently support Charles VII’s bid for the crown during the Hundred Years’ War against England. Be it through military prowess or divine right, Joan claimed victory for the French at the siege of Orléans. Two years later, aged 19, she was captured by the English and burnt at the stake under the contrived conviction of ‘cross-dressing’. In the posthumous retrial of 1456, she was declared innocent. Joan was canonised as a patron saint of France in 1920.]]> Pierre Le Moyne]]> Books]]> pouf that depicted the bizarre, contemporary scene of Louis XVI’s inoculation against smallpox. In Langlade’s biography of the celebrated Bertin, he describes Marie Antoinette’s reign as ‘one of futility and chiffon’. Unfortunately, the Queen’s love of extravagance fanned the flames of the Revolution that would be her downfall.]]> Émile Langlade]]> Books]]> Modern Housewife, takes the form of an epistolary recipe exchange between two fictitious housewives, Eloise and Hortense.]]> Alexis Soyer]]> Books]]> Alexis Soyer]]> Books]]> Costume History contains examples of the ‘over-the-top’ styles popularised by Marie Antoinette – impractical wigs and headwear (les poufs) worn with elaborate dresses. Today, Paris is still at the very centre of all things fashionable.]]> Auguste Racinet]]> With kind permission © 2015 TASCHEN GmbH, Hohenzollernring 53, D-50672 Köln, www.taschen.com]]> Books]]> Mrs Charles Stothard (Anna Eliza Bray)]]> Books]]> des villes, des bourgs, des villages, et généralement de tous les lieux remarquables de la France’ – ‘cities, market towns, villages, and generally all of the remarkable places in France’. This engraving shows the spring in Fontaine de Vaucluse, a small town 25 kilometres from Avignon in the southeast of France. Vaucluse literally means ‘closed valley’, and it is at the end of the valley that the famous spring – ‘fontaine’ – is located, the biggest in France. Every year 630 million cubic metres of water flows from the spring, the bottom of which has never been ascertained. The little town is still a popular tourist destination today.]]> [Pierre Girault]]]> Books]]> Jodocus Sincerus [Justus Zinzerling]]]> 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]]> Gargantua and Pantagruel.]]> François Rabelais]]> Every effort has been made to trace copyright ownership and to obtain permission for reproduction. If you believe you are the copyright owner of an item on this site, and we have not requested your permission, please contact us at special.collections@otago.ac.nz ]]> Books]]> Essais (Essays), digressive self-reflective musings covering everything from ‘Smels and odours’, ‘Friendship’, and ‘Of Exercise or Practise’, to (as here) ‘Of Idleness’ and ‘Of Lyars’, were first published in French between 1580 and 1588. In 1603, John Florio (1553-1625), language tutor at the Court of James I, translated them into English. This is the second English edition of 1613. In the past, those influenced by Montaigne’s Essays have included fellow Frenchmen Descartes, Pascal, and Rousseau.]]> Michel de Montaigne]]> Books]]> James Duncan]]> Books]]> Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière was a 36-volume treatise on the intricacies of countless branches of scientific endeavour. The work presented ground-breaking ideas on evolution and climate change, and frequently placed Buffon at odds with theological societies. In this particular volume, Buffon outlines his theory on the origin of the Earth, concluding it to be 70,000 years older than the date officially sanctioned by the Church.]]> Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon]]> 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]]> Jules Verne]]> Books]]> H. A. Vossler]]> 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]]> Français. After consulting with other polar explorers like Bruce and Shackleton, Charcot set off on his second voyage into the Antarctic on the Pourquoi-pas? in 1908. Aboard ship were 30 men, 250 tons of coal, various pieces of scientific apparatus, provisions for three years, a dozen sledges, and several pairs of skis. Boat and crew wintered over on the SE coast of Petermann Island on the Antarctic Peninsula. Despite ‘violent and continual attacks of Antarctic tempests’ they carried out scientific observations and collected data. Despite experiencing some sickness, all survived and returned to France in June 1910.]]> Jean Charcot]]> Books]]> Voltaire]]> Manuscripts]]> 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]]> Marie de Rabutin-Chantal Sévigné]]> Books]]> Candide. Published almost simultaneously in five countries in early 1759, the satire was promptly banned. The book is famous for its ultimate theme: ‘we must cultivate our garden’; in contrast to the Leibnizian optimism, taught to the protagonist, Candide as a young man, that ‘all is for the best’. Voltaire died on the 30th May 1778. In 1791, he was enshrined in the Panthéon in Paris that is now a resting place for the remains of many distinguished French citizens.]]> Voltaire]]> Books]]> [Richard Twiss]]]> Books]]> Gentleman’s Magazine describes the final and decisive pincer move executed by the English to capture Montreal in September 1760. The French surrendered to England; and as the Magazine article states the English were now in ‘quiet possession of all North America’.]]> ___]]> Books]]> La culture maraîchère (market gardening), in and around the city of Paris in the 19th century, carried on the intensive and innovative gardening techniques of La Quintinie from the 17th century. French market gardens were typically only two acres of land at most, but they could produce up to ten crops per year with the use of walled gardens, cloches, growing frames, and large quantities of manure. The author of this book, former Manchester printer Thomas Smith, was involved in an early 20th century gardening scheme in England. A French maraîcher was brought to a farm in Essex to teach the inventive French techniques used to produce as much as possible from a small piece of land. Here is Smith’s plan for his ‘French Garden’, consisting of 20 beds in total.]]> Thomas Smith]]> Books]]>