Description:

Scarce 1st Ed. of English Broadside Lampooning Napoleon & Others

An English broadside, entitled "MEMOIRS of BUONAPARTE, His Imperial Family, Great Officers of State, and Great Military Officers." London: G. Smeeton, [ca. 1814]. Measuring 10.75" x 14.5" (sight), featuring at top center, a hand-colored "Hieroglyphic portrait" of Napoleon after Johann Michael voltz. Light creases and a few ink smudges, else fine. We cannot source any examples of this first edition appearing at auction and have only found either slightly later versions with different letterpress. The two later editions of this broadside, dating from 1814 and 1820, appear to be equally scarce.

The broadside is a scurrilous attack on Napoleon Bonaparte, most likely published in the last days of the campaign that led to his abdication in 1814. (The last date in the text is 1813.) The broadside is dominated at top center by a "hieroglyphic Portrait of Buonaparte" which has been described at the lower right: "The French Eagle, crouching, forms the chapeau en militaire, the Red Sea represents his throat, illustrative of his drowning armies: the visage, is formed of carcas[s]es of the unhappy victims to his cruel ambition: the hand is judiciously placed as the epaulet, drawing the Rhenish Confederacy, under the flimsy symbol of the cob-web, and the spider is a symbolic emblem of the vigilance of the Allies!" The balance of the broadside features short biography/character assassinations which would lead us to believe (among other things) that Napoleon's mother was a brothel keeper and at sixteen he poisoned a girl he had made pregnant. 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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