Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager at the Court of England, Towards the close of the last Reign. Wherein Some of the most Secret Transactions of that Time, relating to the Interest of the Pretender, and a Clandestine separate Peace [...]

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Full title: Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager at the Court of England, Towards the close of the last Reign. Wherein Some of the most Secret Transactions of that Time, relating to the Interest of the Pretender, and a Clandestine separate Peace, are detected and laid open. Written by Himself. Done out of French. 8vo., pp. [1-2], 3-326. Signatures: A-U8 X4. Bound in contemporary calf, neatly rebacked. First and only early edition of these ‘fictitious memoirs of Nicolas Mesnager [1658-1714], Louis XIV’s envoy to London during the secret peace negotiations of the autumn of 1711’ (P.N. Furbank & W.R. Owens, Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe. London and Brookfield, VT., 1998, pp. 179-81. A firm attribution to Defoe, aimed at influencing the trial of his patron Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and one of his few clearly fabricated texts claiming strict authenticity: there is, of course, no French ‘original’. J. R. Moore, A Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe. Bloomington, 1960, p. 148; Furbank & Owens 194.
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