[CARACCIOLI Louis-Antoine de]. - Lot 11

[CARACCIOLI Louis-Antoine de]. Le Livre à la mode. A Verte-Feuille : De l'Imprimerie du Printemps, [1759]. - In-8, 170 x 108 : XX, 79 pp. Half tan basane, smooth spine decorated, untrimmed (pastiche binding). Didier Travier, " Louis-Antoine Caraccioli ou les amusements typographiques d'un moraliste mondain ", L'Écrivain et l'Imprimeur, sous la dir. d'Alain Riffaud, Rennes, PUR, pp. 175-192. Original in-8 edition, printed entirely in green ink. This typographical curiosity offers a satire against the afféteries of the time, espousing the frivolous codes of fashion: "enough & too long books announce themselves in a gloomy form. Should a century as pretty as ours write in black characters that depict catafalques and funerals? [...] Printers should have imitated porcelain makers a long time ago, and they would have succeeded. What lady would have refused to buy a book the color of her fan, or her parrot? And what little master wouldn't have devoured a volume like the velvets and Peruvians in fashion?" The work is attributed to the prolific Marquis de Caraccioli (1719-1803), who published a new Livre de la mode printed in red the same year, and a Livre des quatre couleurs the following year. There are two editions of this book, which were already in circulation in early 1759: the first in in-8 format, in which the ink has remained green (as here), and the second in in-12 format, in which the ink has often turned brown/gold. A fine copy. Minor foxing.