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DESTOUCHES, Philippe pseud. NERICAULT SKU: 17981 Barcode:
Stock No. 17981
Authors: Philippe, DESTOUCHES pseud. NERICAULT (1680-1754)
Paris: Librairie de Bure, 1826
Complet en trois volumes / complete in three volumes. 24mo (5 x 3.5 ins) Handsomely bound in full black calf with elaborate, diamond-shaped design to sides, single gilt fillet, four raised bands to spine with highly unusual gilt tools with slight ecclesiastical flavour. All edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. Engraved portrait frontispiece in vol I. Some light foxing to prelims in all vols. Contains: I. Le philosophe marié; ou, Le mari honteux de l'être, comédie. Le glorieux, comédie. II. Le triple mariage, comédie. Le dissipateur; ou, L'honnete friponne, comédie. III. Le fausse Agnès; ou, Le poete campagnard, comédie. Le tambour nocturne; ou, Le mari devin, comédie. [Hollis: 990033491500203941]Destouches (1680-1754), French dramatist, real name Nericault, was born in Tours. Aged nineteen he became secretary to M. de Puysieux, the French ambassador in Switzerland. In 1716 he was attached to the French embassy in London, where he remained for six years under the abbé Dubois. Whilst there, he contracted with a Lancashire woman, Dorothea Johnston, in a marriage which was not avowed for some years. He drew a picture later of his own domestic circumstances at this time in Le Philosophe marie (1726). On his return to France in 1723 he was elected to the Academy, and in 1727 he acquired considerable estates, the possession of which conferred the privileges of nobility. He spent his later years at his château of Fortoiseau near Melun, dying on the 4th of July 1754. His early comedies were: Le Curieux Impertinent (1710), L'Ingrat (1712), L'Irresolu (1713) and Le Medisant (1715). After eleven years of diplomatic service Destouches returned to the stage with the Philosophe marie (1727), followed in 1732 by his masterpiece Le Glorieux, a picture of the struggle then beginning between the old nobility and the wealthy parvenus who found their opportunity in the poverty of France. Destouches wished to revive the comedy of character as understood by Molière, but he thought it desirable that the moral should be directly expressed. This moralizing tendency spoilt his later comedies. Among them may be mentioned: Le Tambour nocturne (1736), La Force du naturel (1750) and Le Dissipateur (1736) [Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911]
