Articles destinés à la troisième édition de la Biographie moderne

Born in Uzès in 1755 and died in Paris in 1825, Dampmartin became imperial censor after the 18 Brumaire and, under the Restoration, librarian at the war ministry. Among his published works was the celebrated Un provincial à Paris pendant une partie de l’année 1789. A valuable witness to the revolutionary period, he contributed extensively to the Biographie moderne… publiée par le libraire-éditeur, a panorama of contemporary figures.

As Dampmartin explains in his “Avertissement,” this carefully calligraphed manuscript copy contains the additions intended for the third edition of the Biographie. It is of particular interest in that it undoubtedly includes certain unpublished passages that the publisher, out of caution toward the censors, may have cut at the time. Dampmartin himself states that, should this be the case, he would not go back to check and inflict upon himself “a reading that would become too painful,” but says that “with a view to keeping track for myself of the articles that left my study, I keep a copy of them.”

Once completed, he had it sumptuously bound by Thouvenin.

From the Dampmartin and de Broglie libraries (bookplate).

A very fine copy.