The memoirs of Joseph Fouché, Duke of Otranto, minister of the general police of France. by Fouché, Joseph - 1825

London: Charles Knight (William Clowes, pr.), 1825. 8vo. Frontis. port., viii, 357, [3], 329, [1] pp.

First English edition of the memoirs of France's notorious chief police officer during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Era. As Minister of Police under the Directory, Joseph Fouché (1759 or 1763–1820) was instrumental in reorganizing and centralizing the police system in France and was kept on by Napoleon until he fell out of favor in 1802. However, his network of intelligence gathering proved invaluable to Napoleon, who reinstated him in 1804 (until 1810) and again during the Hundred Days. The authenticity of these memoirs is no longer in doubt and they provide some insight into the political intrigues of the period. It's also an extremely self-serving work — he writes on p. 2 that he never wielded his "mysterious and terrible power" except to "calm the passions, disunite factions, and prevent conspiracies." Illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of the author. Two volumes bound in one.
    
    NSTC 2F12262, 2J13268, & 2B13609. Green cloth over boards, gilt rules and lettering to spine; cloth worn away at spine extremities and corners and splitting over front joint; preliminary pages (including frontispiece) and pp. 1–2 separated from binding. Private ownership signature at top edge of title-pages; a (different) private owner's pressure- and rubber-stamps; institutional bookplate. Off-setting to six pages from old newspaper articles or leaves laid in; old newspaper article (a review of a much later biography of Fouché) still inserted; Inner margin of pp. 327–8 repaired, not affecting text. Spotting and staining of various sorts and a few dog-ears; not a swell copy but a perfectly serviceable one.