The French writer Alexis Piron (1689–1773) is best known for his plays written for the Comédie-Française, but his early works (Œuvres badines) consisted mostly of poetry, short stories and epigrams, many of them experimental and a little risqué. It is this aspect of his work that inspired this anonymous set of engravings, which appeared in several editions of the Œuvres badines between 1800 and 1920. This previously-unrecorded edition was nominally published in Amsterdam at the Presses de la Société, though almost certainly in reality in Paris. The publication date, ‘Year of the World ???????’, is an amusing detail; our estimate of 1880 feels about right.

Piron was born in Dijon, and began life as a clerk, then studied law, though writing at the same time. In 1719 he moved to Paris, neatly arriving just as a new edict came into force restricting small theatres to performances with only one actor on stage. Most writers for this theatre at the time found this impossible, but Piron was a great success with a piece called Arlequin Deucalion, representing the stages of human development after the Great Flood. He went on to produce several successful comedies, most notably Les fils ingrats (The Ungrateful Children) in 1728.

His most intimate relationship was with the actress Mademoiselle Quinault, with whom he maintained a long and intimate friendship, very likely at times a romantic attachment. However, they never married, and in 1741 Piron married Quinault’s close friend Marie-Thérèse Quénaudon, known as Mlle de Bar, with Quinault remaining an important figure in his social circle.

Piron published his own theatrical works in 1758, and after his death his friend and literary executor, Rigoley de Juvigny, published his Œuvres complètes.

The engravings, line illustrations in a crosshatched manner that closely recalls eighteenth-century models – indeed some may have been recycled from other similar works – range from the competently atmospheric to the frankly caricatural. Anticlerical subjects feature prominently, and the content overall is rather more explicit than the delicate badinage of Piron’s texts strictly requires, lending the images an enjoyable edge of irreverence that sits well with the spirit of the Œuvres badines.