LAURANS.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Le Français politique, ou coup-d'oeil sur la politique, le commerce et les arts, poème en deux chants. A seemingly unrecorded French poem in alexandrines published two years after the American War of Independence by the "Marchands de nouveautés", printers of ephemera and popular, topical pamphlets active in London, Paris and Frankfurt. The author, printed simply as "M. Laurans", may have been Henri Joseph Du Laurens (sometimes Laurens or Dulaurens, born Henri Joseph Laurent, 1719-1793 or 1797), a French satirical poet and novelist, unfrocked trinitarian monk and author of some libertine works. The poem offers a bird's-eye-view of the major contemporary European superpowers and their imperialistic hunger, thwarted by recent history - most notably in the case of Britain's humiliation and America's successful assertion of independence. The author's message is that prosperity in industry, in science and technology, in trade and in the arts, is a superior ambition to empires, and that an emphasis on progress, peace and legality ought to be the mark of a truly enlightened monarch.We have been unable to trace any other copy of this work in library catalogues, bibliographies or auction records.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.