Home / Browse / History / A Picture of Verdun, or the English detained in France;
[LAWRENCE, James Henry]
A Picture of Verdun, or the English detained in France;
their arrestation---detention at Fontainbleau and Valenciennes---confinement at Verdun---incarceration at Bitsche---amusements---sufferings---indulgences granted to some, acts of extortion and cruelty practiced on others---characters of General and Madame Wirion---list of those who have been permitted to leave or who have escaped out of France---occasional poetry---and anecdotes of the principal detenus. From the portfolio of a detenu.
Publisher: London, T. Hookham, Jun. and E. T. Hookham, 1810
Stock code: 32570
Price: £400 Currency Conversion
First edition. In 1803 Lawrence, happening to be in France with his father, was arrested, along with the other English residents and tourists, and detained for several years at Verdun. He eventually effected his escape by passing himself off as a German. A second edition was published the same year. He published a five-act play about it in 1813. James Henry Lawrence (1773–1840) is best known for his novel, The Empire of the Nairs (4 vols., 1811), which proselytised the unorthodox customs of the Nairs of Malabar with respect to marriage and inheritance. Heavily influenced by William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the French philosophes, he in turn had an important influence on Percy Bysshe Shelley, who met him, and whose Queen Mab (clandestinely published by Hookham, 1813), other works and indeed whole life are saturated in Lawrencian ideas of free love.
2 volumes, 12mo. Contemporary tree calf, black morocco labels, smooth spines gilt in compartments. Engraved bookplates of Susan Mary Anne Wharton. Front joint of vol. I tender, spines rubbed, two small circular indentations in upper cover of vol. I but leather unbroken, an excellent copy.
