Vie privée et criminelle de François Desrues ; contenant les particularités de sa jeunesse, ses mauvaises inclinations, son insigne hypocrisie, et le détail des man uvres abominables et des crimes atroces commis, de dessein prémédité par ce scélérat, envers la dame de Lamotte et son fils.
Paris: Chez Cailleau, 1777. First edition. 8vo, 131 pp, extra-illustrated with 36 captioned copper engravings, some folded and one hand-colored, in an early amateur binding of blue paper over cardboard, with irregularly cut blue strips of paper carefully pasted down onto the endpapers, and 2 later newspaper articles about the case. Bookplate of L. Gaudeffroy to fep, and later acquisition note in a small graceful hand to ffep, dated 1907.
First edition of this spectacular account of the murder case which foreshadowed the French Revolution, and a unique artifact of police propaganda and the portrayal of gender in the last days of the Ancien Regíme.
Desrue, born in 1744 in humble circumstances, moved to Paris in order to make his fortune as a grocer. The business failed in 1773, leaving him deeply in debt and juggling loans to maintain the social standing of his family. Undaunted, he then entered in negotiations with one Madame La Motte in order to purchase her country estate and title. La Motte and her teenage son disappeared shortly thereafter, while Desrues assumed his new title, forging a receipt and appearing in the office of a lawyer in a dress in order to impersonate La Motte.
After the poisoned bodies of La Motte and her son were discovered, Desrues was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. Desrues was well-liked in the community and maintained his innocence, and the judiciary, fearing sympathy for him in the restive public, retried him and sentenced him to death on the rack, a sentence which was carried out on May 6th.
It wasn’t enough to harrow his body. This book appeared just days after the trial, available in a standard edition, or a deluxe addition accompanied by engravings, along with a printed insertion guide for purchases. Simultaneously the streets of Paris were flooded with a mysterious profusion of other sinister engravings of Desrues and his exploits.
The engravings were the brainchild of Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir, the Lieutenant of Police in France, who secretly arranged and coordinated several presses to begin churning out the engravings. The iconography of the engravings is remarkable and consistent, portraying him as a slight, androgynous figure with pale, sinister features, often wearing a nightgown. The iconography seems to have been made to reinforce claims made in this book that Desrues was born intersex, and had undergone male assignment surgery. [Levy et al p. 60]
The campaign was so effective that the famous criminologist Lombroso used one of these portraits to illustrate his theory of phrenological criminal determinism. The September 11th edition of the Journal de Paris reported that an elderly woman was so shocked at these depictions of Desrues that she threw herself out of a third floor window “after becoming suspicious of her own complicity.” [Ibid p. 61]
The book could be purchased alone, or accompanied by 40 plates printed by Esnaults & Rapilly or Mondhare, meant to be inserted according to a guide on p. 131. The 36 engravings found here do not match the titles on the insertion guide, and are of varying sizes. We believe them to be examples of the more ephemera broadsides sold by peddlars, here collected and inserted by a previous owner. A unique example of the book, and a collection of images which would be difficult to complete outside of this copy.
The book is a macabre but beautiful object. The handcut blue paper strips pasted down onto the endpapers are evocative of prison bars, and the tendency of the unruly text block to splay the boards of the book outward is reminiscent of a jailbreak, an unruly body that spills out to haunt the enclosure.
A thoroughly battered copy, with loss to the margins some pages and engravings, and an internal tear with some loss to text on one page, in addition to numerous old tape repairs and other mends. Item #29461
Price: $1,500.00