BEVERLEY, Robert. Histoire de la Virginie ; contenant I. L’histoire de son établissement, de son gouvernement jusques à présent. II. Les productions naturelles & les commodités du païs, avant que les Anglois y négociassent, & l’améliorassent ; III. La Religion, les loix et les coutumes des Indiens naturels, tant dans la guerre que dans la paix ; IV. L’Etat présent du païs tant à l’égard de la Police que de l’amélioration du païs. Par un Auteur natif & habitant du Païs. Traduite de l’anglois (…).

First French edition of this rare work, one of the best relations on Virginia.

Illustrated with a title-frontispice, a folding table and 14 plates representing notably Amerindians.

The volume tells the story of the colony and the trade, the study of the Indians, their habits and customs. It is considered the best contemporary relation on the Indians, characterized by its free and original tone, and its humorous comments, especially on the planters of southern Virginia.

“A curious work for the information it gives on the Indians of Virginia. It is decorated with a frontispiece, 14 engraved plates after De Bry and a table“. Chadenat 1248.

Robert Beverley Jr. (c. 1667-April 21, 1722) was a historian of early colonial Virginia, as well as a planter and political figure. He was born in Jamestown and died in King and Queen County, Virginia. Beverley participated in Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood’s 1716 expedition of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe to the Shenandoah Valley. Journalist John Fontaine reports that on the return journey Beverley and his horse fell and rolled down a hill, but without serious injury However, when Beverley published a revised edition of his Histoire in 1722, he only continued it until 1710, so there is no known account by Beverley of this event.

Regarding slavery, in the 1722 reprint Beverley says that while black men and women were likely to work in the fields, white women were not.

precious copy bound with the arms of Madame de Pompadour.

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, duchess-marquise de Pompadour et de Ménars near Blois, dame de Saint-Ouen, daughter of Antoine, first clerk in the offices of the Paris brothers, and of a libertine mother, born in Paris on 29 December 1721, with all the seductive qualities of mind and body, She received a careful education thanks to the protection of her mother’s friend, the financier Le Normand de Tournehem, who made her marry his nephew, Charles-Guillaume le Normand d’Etioles, knight of honour at the presidial of Blois, then farmer-general, on 9 March 1741, of whom she was the first wife and to whom she gave a daughter; cold and calculating, she set her ambition to become the mistress of Louis XV; At first she had a most brilliant salon frequented by her admirers, by artists and writers, then she succeeded in attracting the attention of the king and on 23 April 1745 she was installed at court in the former flat of Madame de Mailly; Immediately created Marquise de Pompadour, then named lady of the palace of the queen on February 8, 1756, she reigned without sharing on the king and governed France under his name, during nineteen years, until her death, in spite of the unceasingly renewed intrigues and the libels of all kinds which rained on her; if one must agree that she protected arts and letters and that she founded the manufacture of Sèvres, it is necessary to recognize that her politics and her prodigality were harmful for France. Madame de Pompadour, exhausted by the life of pleasure she had led, died in Versailles on 15 April 1764, aged only 42, leaving all her possessions to her brother the Marquis de Marigny.