France for the last seven years; or, The Bourbons. By W.H. Ireland. Member of the Athenæum of Sciences and Arts at Paris

About this book

8vo. pp. xvi, 439. Signatures: [A]8 B-Z8 AA-EE8 FF4. Half calf. With G. Hilder Libbis booklabel on cover and his bookplate pasted in front; extra-illustrated by him. Facsimile “Autographs of Napoleon” pasted on front flyleaf. Handwritten index tipped in back. Three illustrations and two pages from Maggs Bros. catalog removed from volume. The items are available in MS 580 in Special Collections (Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University). In the present work, the Shakespeare forger William Henry Ireland (1775-1835), who had witnessed the French Revolution as a teenager and was back in France for the First Empire to celebrate Napoleon’s Hundred Days, claims that he personally witnessed Napoleon’s return from Elba. Ireland wrote this book when working at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, shortly before he saw himself forced to relocate to Britain once more because of his Bonapartist sympathies. See also J. Lynch, “England’s Ireland, Ireland’s England. William Henry Ireland’s National Offense,” in W. Stephens & E. Havens (eds.), Literary forgery in early modern Europe, 1450-1800, Baltimore, 2018, pp. 255-256. Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.