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(1743) Fielding's fictional biography of the thief and con artist Jonathan Wild is a satire of English political life in general, and of “prime minister” Robert Walpole in particular. The running joke is that Wild (like Walpole) is a “great man”, i.e., driven to (in)famous deeds by ambition and avarice and untroubled by “vulgar” traits like honesty or loyalty. Deeply cynical -- misanthropic, even -- but also funny and uncomfortably relevant.

D'Agoult...returned an hour and a half later....and announced that he had new orders specifying that he arrest councilors Duval d'Éprémesnil and Goislard de Montsabert. At that point, according to several accounts, all the magistrates replied with one voice, "We are all Duval and Goislard. It is all of us you must arrest."

France 1788 #ImSpartacus

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Phew, nearly there..

[Cardinal] Rohan believed that Cagliostro exercised occult power: he could cure disease, transform metal into gold, and see into the future. When asked... whether he had any regrets about the life he had led, he replied that he still felt terrible about the assassination of Pompey...
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"The Affair of tbe Diamond Necklace" - reads like fiction, unsurprisingly the talk of Paris in 1785.

I finished this book this morning. The novel proper is quite short and readable, although I don't think I'll ever really enjoy a work where a writer uses a foreign narrator or character from a culture they don't actually know to further their plots or theories. However, the extra critical material does an excellent job of contextualising this 18th best-seller written by a blue-stocking with proto-feminist sensibilities.

illustration from the book

Mme du Barry continued to be the favorite target of libellers... A scurrilous biography, Anecdotes secrètes sur Mme la comtesse du Barry, traced her career from the brothel to the royal bed...It became a top best seller in the underground book trade of the 1770s...

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Royal gossip clearly not new.
Image from "her" webpage.
http://www.madamedepompadour.com/_eng_pomp/home.htm

I 1st heard of this book when researching #Peru for #FoodAndLit but it wouldn't do b/c it's all about France. It is an 18th-c. epistolary novel written by a French woman. The narrator is an Inca “virgin of the sun“ snatched by Spanish conquistadores, then taken by French soldiers to France. Her letters to her Inca fiancé describe France & its mores from the point of view of an outsider - a “Noble Savage“ - uncorrupted by European civilisation.

Not quite, AI, not quite... (prompt "Rousseau's cold remedy bottle")
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Of course, many earlier books, especially devotional tracts, had brought tears to the eyes of their readers, but La Nouvelle Héloïse released a flood: "tears," "sweet tears," "tears that are sweet," "delicious tears," "tears of tenderness." One reader sobbed so vehemently that he cured himself of a severe cold.

Rousseau addressed the paradox of his position as a novelist in two prefaces, which explained that novels were bad in themselves because they caused corruption, yet salutary in that they could inspire virtue among those already trapped in a corrupt society.

He also added a further paradox: "This novel is not a novel.
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!!! Cake and eating it!?

(1740)

Hooray for the magic of low expectations! I'd braced myself for a tedious slog, so was pleased to find an unexpectedly engaging story of power and resistance. Pamela's obsession with Virtue doesn't resonate, but as a drama of compulsion and consent, it's surprising how much still works. Of course a lot doesn't work: Pamela is as exasperatingly twee as she is sympathetic, and the hero belongs in prison. But I was prepared for so much worse.