{"id":1428,"date":"2025-01-28T14:09:04","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2025-01-29T23:57:31","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T23:57:31","slug":"macintosh-and-mirabeau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1428","title":{"rendered":"Macintosh and Mirabeau"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
The sale listing for Mirabeau’s library catalogue.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Last week, Christie’s auctioned<\/a> a particularly attractive copy of the sale catalogue<\/a> of the library of the Comte de Mirabeau<\/a>. Despite an estimate of US$2,500 at the upper end, the book eventually sold for an eye-watering US$12,000. Listing nearly 3,000 titles, the beginning of what Mirabeau hoped to be a large and open research library, the catalogue provides evidence that Mirabeau owned a copy of the first French edition of Macintosh’s Travels<\/em>. Evidence of ownership is not, of course, evidence of reading, especially for a bibliophile like Mirabeau, but it is always a useful spark to further inquiry. Many of the books in Mirabeau’s library came as a job lot from the library of the Comte de Buffon<\/a>, so the tantalising possibility exists that this particular copy of Macintosh’s Travels<\/em> may have previously been owned by him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The first three of the four editions of the French translation of Travels<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All told, four editions of the French translation of Travels<\/em> were published in a seven-year period straddling the Revolution: 1786, 1788, 1792, and 1793 (the first two of which, per standard practice at the time, bore the false imprint “A Londres”, while the third* advertised the translator-cum-editor, Jacques-Pierre Brissot<\/a>, and the real city of publication, Paris). Each of these editions circulated and was read (or not read) in ways that are difficult to identify and reconstruct over a distance of centuries. Small clues, like the catalogue of Mirabeau’s library, do, however, offer us something to go on. As ever, there is more digging to do. Onwards, onwards!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Brissot’s name was, by the 1793 edition, again absent, possibly reflecting his changing fortunes in the year of his arrest and execution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Christie’s auctioned a particularly attractive copy of the sale catalogue of the library of the Comte de Mirabeau. Despite an estimate of US$2,500 at the upper end, the book eventually sold for an eye-watering US$12,000. Listing nearly 3,000 titles, the beginning of what Mirabeau hoped to be a large and open research library, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}