The French author Louis-Balthazar Néel published in 1752 his satirical Voyage de Paris à Saint-Cloud par mer et retour de Saint-Cloud à Paris par terre; a story that simultaneously mocked the genre of travel literature and the people of Paris and its environs.
Néel takes his reader on an imaginary journey from Paris to Saint-Cloud, about 15 kilometers from the centre of Paris, upstream on the Seine. The work is a bitter satire of Parisian life in the eighteenth century. The hero of the story and citizen of Paris receives an invitation to a country house in Saint-Cloud. To him, covering the short distance requires the outmost preparations. He buys himself a geographical map, a compass and a gun to prepare for all eventualities. He even takes the time to write his will and pays his outstanding debts. The journey on the wild and rough sea he professes to traverse is in reality the relatively calm Seine.
His Voyage de Paris à Saint-Cloud was his most notable publication that underwent several re-editions throughout his lifetime and thereafter.
Good condition, some tearing on the binding and spine. BNF 33999536.