GODWIN (William) Lot n° 27

Saint-Léon, history of the sixteenth century. Translated from the English. Paris, Michel, Le Normant, Billois, An 8-1800. Three volumes in-12, half period green calf (small snag on the cap of volume II), yellow jaspered slices. False title, title, three frontispices engraved on copper by Mariage d'après Chaillou. Xii (preface), 342-336-330 pages (without freckles). Gothic novel "Rosicrucian" or black novel, where the hero obtains from a mysterious foreigner the secrets of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life and crosses in Hungary the road of a bloodthirsty prince of Transylvania. William Godwin is the father of Mary Shelley, who herself would write Frankenstein a few years later...