GRAFFIGNY, Françoise d’Isembourg d’Happoncourt de. Lettres d’une péruvienne… Suite des lettres d’une péruvienne.
A Peine, s.t. né data [1747]
8vo; Contemporary full leathe rbinding, gilt titles and ornaments on the spine, red edges; pp. VIII incl. Half title and title page, 248; pp. VI, incl. Half title and title page, 7-44; woodcut ornaments, Italic type.

Very rare original edition. Released anonymously and in fictitious press, this work, written on the model of Lettres persannes of Montesquieu, is a sentimental novel with protofemministi accents, which tells the story of Zilia, a Peruvian princess exiled in France who writes to her lover remained in Peru , denouncing the injustices of French society, in particular the inequality of the sexes in favor of men, and outlining a penetrating satire of manners and very effective.

We find the condemnation of the separation of the sexes, the lack of education for girls, the different morality for men and women, all themes dear to the Enlightenment. The Letters were blacklisted in 1765, in spite of their great popularity and the wide fame that had won him the author, Voltaire's friend, whose salon was frequented by the finest Parisian intellectuals, as Helvetius, Turgot and Diderot. The work was strenuously defended by Raimondo di Sangro, who wrote an apologetic letter, in which among other things provides its own version about the mysterious quipqu Zilia on which the princess wrote the letters: it is colored cotton nodes that could only be deciphered by those who knew of the "key" logical-mathematical. But also the Sangro Letter was put on the Index. Slight damages at the binding, inside mint copy.

Barbier, II, 1246; Palau, III, 393; Debacker 1131; INED, Rahir, Picot, Quérard, per edizioni posteriori.