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["check: translation of the mentioned work ?? svd mrt 2007\r\nno, cf Advertisement below. svd jun10\r\n\r\ncopies:\r\n- Cambridge\r\n- Trinity college\r\n- New York Univ.\r\n- Berkeley\r\n- Illinois\r\n- Yale\r\n- Libr. of Congress\r\n- California\r\n\r\nconcerning paratext:\r\n{Name of woman |NOT on title page}\r\n{Name of translator NOT on title page}\r\niii- Advertisement\r\nThere is perhaps not in history an era more curious and interesting than that in which those great personages, Charlemagne in the West, the Empress Irene and Haroun Alrachid in the East, gave law to the greatest part of the then known world. [...] But of the three, Haroun Alrachid, [...] seems to have more excited the European curiosity. The merit then of the Author of the following production is not only to have assembled all the scattered passages related to the life of a prince so famous [.../ ..]\r\niv\r\nbut ti have thrown that compilation into the most agreeable form of entertainment for the making itself be read [...] and yet retaining enough of the oriental air and manner to distinguish it from the common insipid run of French romances; of which all the characters are, without regard to propriety, drawn in the French fashion of _Messieurs_ and _Mesdames_.\r\nThere is also an uncommon circumstance to be mentioned in favour of this work, that, by its being a translations from an unpublished original, it has the merit, if not of originality, at least of novelty.\r\nAs to the original author, who is a Lady, it might perhaps suffice to observe that she is already advantageously known in the literary world, by productions in more than one kind /\r\nv\r\nof writing. The King of Prussia himself, in the midst of all the occupations of a war, in which he was making head singly against an union of the greatest powers in Europe, vouchsafed to express, by letter to her, his sense of her merit. But even her private history has something uncommonly curious in it. Madam de Fauques de la Cepedes, for that is her real name, forced, in her tender years, by a cruel parent, into a convent at Avignon, her place of birth, and there to take her vows, she, on the death of her persecutor and unnatural oppressor, had the courage to appeal to the court of Rome against the violence which had been done her, and obtained so authentic a sentence in her favour, of the nullity of her vows, that she procured her liberty, and her due share of fortune from the co-heirs.\r\nIt was there that she casually became acquainted with the young Chevalier, by whom, it is said, she had a son, lately dead. [.../...]\r\nviii\r\n\r\nM. Fontenelle, and many other great judges, admired and praised her genius. Some misfortunes however into which she fell, thro' that excess of passions which seems to be too common a visitation on extraordinary talents, perhaps so ordained for the consolation of those who have none, brought her to this hospitable country, where one would wish her to meet with the greater indulgence for her being a woman well-bord, a stranger, not perhaps over happy, and of a literary merit so rare in those of her sex.\r\n[n.s.]\r\nsvdjun10chawton"]
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