[ESTATES-GENERAL. REVOLUTION]. - Lot 45

[ESTATES-GENERAL. REVOLUTION]. A Philosophical, Theological, and Political Treatise on the Law of Divorce: A Petition to the Estates-General by His Highness, Monsignor Louis-Philippe-Joseph d’Orléans, First Prince of the Blood, in which the question of celibacy among both sexes and the moral causes of adultery are addressed. (No place, no date), June 1789. In-8, 147 pp. Sewn (paper slightly soiled and half-title page dog-eared and stained; a minor tear on the first folio). A rare text published on the eve of the Revolution, attributed to the circle of Louis-Philippe d’Orléans (the future Duke of Orléans, known as Philippe Égalité) and sometimes attributed to Sieyès or Hubert de Matigny, though this remains uncertain. Only 2 copies in the CCFr. At the dawn of the French Revolution, a genuine societal debate began regarding the secularization of marriage and the legalization of divorce. In June 1789, amid the turmoil of the Estates-General in Versailles (marked in particular by the Duke of Orléans’s defection to the Third Estate on June 25), proposals from reformers multiplied (the first law authorizing divorce would be passed in September 1792). Provenance: from the library of Pierre Séjourné. Pierre Séjourné (1930–1993), a Parisian bookseller and collector of fine bindings, a flutist, and a lover of literature and classical music, was as much a part of Paris’s artistic and literary circles as he was of the world of the decorative arts and their schools, thanks to his uncle, the architect and member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Albert Laprade. Also an author and actor, he devoted himself to writing and performing his own plays, which were staged primarily in the Paris region. M&W,