DORAT (Claude Joseph) - Lot 69

DORAT (Claude Joseph) Mélanges littéraires, ou journal des Dames, dedicated to the Queen. March 1777 - March 1778. Paris, Vve Thiboust, 1777-78. 5 volumes in-12. ½ marbled fawn basane of the period, ornate smooth spines, red titles and tomaisons, red edges. Claude Joseph Dorat, also known as Chevalier Dorat, French poet and playwright. He joined the King's musketeers, but soon left the army. He began to frequent the world of letters, theater and fashionable women. He published in many different genres: poems, tragedies, comedies, tales, fables, epistles, odes, herods... Connected with Fréron and championed by the Année littéraire, he declared himself the enemy of the philosophers, who waged a bitter war against him, and the encyclopedists. In 1777, Dorat became editor of the Journal des Dames, which had been founded in 1759. Dorat subsequently sold the journal to Mercier. Provenance: Printed bookplate from the Bonnard library.