Our Notes & References

A successful caustic satire of the Enlightenment attacking magistrates, the literary and academic world, religion and the King – banned and sold-out as soon as it was published in print, and here available in a contemporary manuscript, in a lovely presentation.

In spite of Voltaire’s harsh criticism of the work (he wrote to the similarly irreverent Marquis d’Argens that Beelzebub himself would be angry that it had been attributed to him), the work met with a clear success, going through a first edition in 1737 followed by a second one “enlarged with all mistakes not included in the first”; and a further version for the year 1738. All printed versions were banned, confiscated and destroyed.

The author, identified on the second edition as “M Castres de Crenay”, was most probably a Jansenist priest “…named Bellemare called ‘Quinet’ or ‘Quesnet’ and who was arrested and put in the Bastille on April 11, 1738, on suspicion of being the real author” (Grand-Carteret) – with his infernal cover name proving to be no cover at all it seems. The work is now attributed to Pierre Quesnel (1699-1774).

The ‘Approbation’ is signed by the infernal entities Demogorgon, Beelezebut, Satan (of course), Belial, Astaroth, Leviatan and Pergalus and is also signed by Gog and Magog. The Privilege, like an earthly one addressed to a living sovereign, is to Lucifer the “Sovereign of Hell… By the wrath of God” and is signed by “Griffart” and the book is registered in the “Librairie Infernale” with the classmark “No. 000000000”. As with the earthly Royal Library, two copies were to be lodged in the Infernal Library.

The Almanach was not Quesnel’s only foray into satanic satire -an interesting exercise for a priest- as he also wrote ‘Eloge de l’Enfer’ under another pseudonym and was not the Spinozan that some assumed he was – but rather a “..French priest of Jansenist leanings.. who was a minor journalist living in the Hague” and one who worked as a corrector in the publisher’s workshop of Pierre Gosse.

Very rare in this form, with another manuscript traced in Yale, and three in France (Orléans, Laval, Ville de Paris) – apparently no manuscript at the BnF. The format and possibly the content of these manuscripts vary.

Provenance

MK (modernist booklabel to upper wrapper).