Published: Paris, A.A. Renouard, 1806.
Description: two volumes, octavo, bookplate of ‘Kalnoky’, early tan polished calf, double brown morocco spine labels.
Condition: a most attractive set, two minor old red ink corrections to the text (I, pp. 122, 152) and an insignificant watermark to a few leaves of the second volume.

A major work in the history of book burning & censorship

First edition: a particularly attractive set of this important work on the most important books that have been condemned to be burnt, suppressed or censored.

Étienne-Gabriel Peignot (1767—1849) was a writer and famous bibliographer, “l’un des plus savants et laborieux bibliographes de ce siècle” (Quérard). Much like his famous near-contemporary in England, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Peignot revolutionized French taste in collecting. The present work is one of his earlier projects and an important study of the limits of censorship. The wide-ranging entries include everything from Voltaire (a very long entry!) to the Encylopédie, with mention of the vicissitudes of any number of important writers, including Machiavelli, Milton, Mercier, Pascal, Rabelais and Spinoza, quite apart from a particular description of the suppression of many religious writers (Toland, Prynne, etc.).

With the small armorial bookplate of Bela Graf Kalnoky (1839-1880).

References: Quérard, La France littéraire, vol. VII, p. 17.