Les Roses de Vaudeville

Paris: Chez Le Fuel (Firmin Didot), 1816. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good+. 12mo. 19th century full green calf gilt (corners bumped), spine lovely in five compartments, with gilt rose design in one of the compartments. A.E.G. An early 19th-century play-book of the French vaudeville theatre, illustrated with an additional engraved hand-colored title page and 12 hand-colored aquatints. The Théâtre du Vaudeville opened in Paris in 1792 on rue de Chartres-Saint-Honoré. “Before Napoleon came to power, vaudevilles were frequently based on social issues, class questions and political concerns, causing not a few disputes with the various parties in power since the founding of the theatre. After about 1804, however, the genre turned away from political and social concerns” (Marvin Carlson, 48). Napoleon was at first “discontented with his theatre due to anti-Republican allusions which he made every evening” (de Lanzac de Laborie, 152), but later embraced it, famously commanding a performance in 1805 for officers who were assembling an invasion force against England. The book contains 18, exceptionally brief, one and two-act vaudevilles, adorned with with 12 delightful plates, each delicately hand-colored. Engraved calendar bound in at the rear. Corners bumped, but a truly lovely copy overall.