CURIOSA - PORTUGUESE JEWS - Lot 24

CURIOSA - PORTUGUESE JEWS [Pierre Desforges], Memoires anecdotes pour servir à l'histoire de M. Duliz, Fameux juif portugais à la Haye. Et la suite de ses avantures, après la catastrophe de celle de Mademoiselle Pelissier, actrice de l'Opera de Paris, bound with: Le triomphe de l'intérêt, comédie. London, Samuel Harding, 1739. Frontispiece engraved in intaglio. In-12. Bound in full contemporary basane, five-ribbed spine decorated with flowers, marbled edges. Numerous old annotations on endpapers; some foxing. A very good copy of a sought-after book. Rare first edition of a piquant account of the antics of a wealthy Portuguese Jew from Holland. Married against his will to a co-religionist, he courts an opera actress who cheats on him and whom he seeks revenge. The story is followed (from p. 131) by a comedy by Louis de Boissy, Le triomphe de l'intérêt (1694-1758), which was first published in Paris in 1734, and which adapts M. Duliz's adventure by portraying him as Jacquin. Barbier III, 181; cf. Cioranescu 23406 and 12358.