Cartouche, Louis Dominique (Defoe, Daniel, trans.) | The Times and Crimes of Louis Cartouche

Cartouche, Louis Dominique (Defoe, Daniel, trans.)

The Life and Actions of Lewis Dominique Cartouche Who was broke alive upon the Wheel at Paris … London: Printed for J. Roberts, 1722

8vo (184 x 114 mm). Woodcut headpiece and initial. Full calf to style, spine in 6 compartments gilt (one reserved for red morocco lettering-piece).

First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original. Louis Dominique Bourguignon, alias "Cartouche" (1693-1721), began his life of crime stealing fruit from women at the gates of his Jesuit school and books from his wealthy classmates. To avoid punishment for theft he fled Paris, and a foray among the gypsies taught him "all the Cant that the Thieves use among themselves; and how to conceal Thefts after he had committed them." Cartouche created his own underworld of some 200 burglars, pickpockets, fences and prostitutes, and "in a little time nothing else was talk’d of in Paris, but Robberies in the Streets, Murders, and Assassinations upon the Pont Neuf." Forced into hiding by his increasing notoriety, he slept in a different bed every night, until his final betrayal and arrest in 1721.

REFERENCE:

ESTC T133711