[Desforges, Pierre]. Memoires Anecdotes pour servir a l’histoire de M. Duliz. Et la suite de ses Avantures, aprés la catastrophe de celle de Mademoiselle Pelissier, Actrice de l’Opera de Paris.

(ANGLO-JUDAICA)

Samuel Harding

London (i.e., Paris?)

1739

FIRST EDITION. Title in red and black with engraved vignette. Anti-Semitic engraved frontispiece portraying Monsieur Deliz courting Mademoiselle Pelissier while in background there awaits an iron cage suspended from a tall gallows.

Jacob Lopez de Liz was an enormously wealthy Jew of Portuguese origin, resident in London. Upon his move to the Hague, his lifestyle was perceived as being extravagantly luxurious and resulted in widespread envy and ill-talk. The present scurrilous work was penned by the manager of the Hague’s “French Comedy Theater” who was put out of business by the theatrical company formed by de Liz and was thus full of recriminations. With the notorious execution of the German-Jewish financier “Jud-Süss,” just a year earlier, there is little that is subtle in the frontispiece in regard to perceiving the author’s intentions toward Mr. de Liz. See M. H. Gans, Memorbook (1971) pp. 240-1; and for the de Liz Family in England, see A. M. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England (1950) pp. 212-3.