Revolutions de Portugal. Par. M. l'Abbé de Vertot, de l'Académie des Inscriptions & Belles Lettres. Nouvelle edition, revûe & augmentée.

Paris, chez la Veuve Didot, Nyon, Durand, Aumont, Babuty and Brocas, 1758.. 8°, contemporary mottled calf (worn but still sound), unidentified armorial gilt supra-libros on both covers with a count's coronet and three birds (ducks?) standing facing the the viewer's right on the shield; spine gilt with raised bands in six compartments, red morocco lettering piece with short title gilt in second compartment from head, marbled endleaves, all text block edges rouged, green silk place marker. Woodcut vignette on title page. Woodcut headpiece. Two typographical headpieces. Small woodcut tailpiece. Occasional minor soiling. A few leaves with small green stain in margins. Overall in good to very good condition. Red stamped armorial ex-Libris of Joaquim de Sousa-Leão (see below) on verso of front free endleaf. (1 blank l.), [iii]–xv, 382 pp., (17 ll.). *** First published in 1689. One of numerous later editions of this work, providing an account of the 1667-1668 palace revolt which established the future D. Pedro II as prince–regent for his brother, the mentally and physically deformed D. Afonso VI, and annulled the marriage of the king to D. Maria Francisca d'Aumale de Savoy, daughter of the Duke of Nemours. D. Pedro then married D. Maria Francisca, thus preserving the French alliance, assuming the throne upon the death of his brother in 1683. D. Maria Francisca survived D. Afonso by only three months.The Capuchin Abbé Vertot (1655–1735) wrote a number of other historical works; this was his most successful; in addition to the many editions in French, the work was translated into English, Spanish and Portuguese.Provenance: Joaquim de Sousa-Leão, a distinguished Brazilian historian and diplomat of Portuguese ascendancy, was a significant book and art collector. He wrote on art and historical subjects, being an expert on the Flemish painter Frans Post: see Frans Post 1612-1680, Amsterdam: A.L. Gendt & Co., 1973, and Frans Post, São Paulo: Civilização Brasileira, 1948.*** This edition not in Duarte de Sousa; cf. 619–620 for French editions of Amsterdam 1722 and Paris 1795; also 621–622 for English editions of London 1735 and 1754. This edition not in Coutinho, Bibliographie Franco–Portugaise; cf. 287 (listing the present edition along with 32 other later [presumably] French language editions, in chronological order, from 1689 to 1859, with only place of publication and publisher, below a fuller description of the Paris 1689 first edition), 395 (adding and describing the edition of The Hague, 1734 and noting several others), 647 (adding an edition of The Hague, 1786), 657 (a Portuguese translation by José Joaquim Soares, Amsterdam 1789), 795 (adding the Portuguese translation, in two volumes, with notes by Fr. Mateus da Assumpção, Lisbon 1815) and 927 (a Spanish translation by D.J.C. Pagès, Paris 1825). NUC: OU, MH, MiU, CU.