THE LIVRE ROUGE,; or The Red Book: being a list of secret pensions, paid out of the public treasure of France: and containing characters of the persons pensioned, anecdotes of their lives, an account of their service. And observations tending to shew the reasons for which the pensions were granted. Translated from the eighth Paris edition.
Dublin: Byrne, 1790. First Irish Edition. 8vo, pp. 160. Front hinge loose. Bound in rubbed and some worn leather backed paper boards (paper lacking from front cover), with some library stamps inside. A good copy for all that. Entirely printed in red. An English edition appeared the same year. See Tourneux, Bibliographie de l'histoire de Paris pendant la revolution Francaise, 3.13483; ESTC T108411 (for the UK Edition); not in Martin-Waller or Saricks. Item #24683
The original French edition of this pretended to be the official list of pensioners published by the government. It was more likely issued to embarrass the ruling class portraying them as a group of loafers living off the work of the population burdened with taxes. It's appearance in England is an indication of the British Jacobean interest in the French goings on. The existence of a Dublin printing is especially strange given that the Irish working population spoke mostly Gaelic and this nasty work is not really aimed at the ruling class who were the subject of its satire. The British library Catalogue offers a possible attribution to Jean-Baptiste Martin Louis La Reynie de la Bruyere (q.v. Querard 4.558-559).
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