Le Comédien. Ouvrage divisé en Deux Parties.

A Paris: Chez Desaint & Saillant, rue Saint Jean de Beauvais. Et Vincent Fils, rue Saint Severin, 1747.. Hardcover. Good. Octavo. 312pp., [iii]ff. A8-V8 (V8 blank). First edition. Contemporary mottled calf. All edges red. Top of spine repaired. With four engraved vignettes by Gravelot. Some tail pieces. Cioranescu 52530; Cohen-DeRicci, p. 869. John Hill plagiarized it, and in little more than a translation published it under the title "The Actor" (1750). A Frenchman, not realizing that the Hill work was in fact based upon Sainte-Albine, re-translated it into French ("Garrick ou les Acteurs Anglais"), and it is this "new" work which provoked Diderot's "Paradoxe ... " An early and substantial French treatise on the art of acting, addressed to performers of comedy, but with discussion of the techniques of tragedy as well; with examples drawn from the works of Racine and Corneille, and such contemporary dramatists as Voltaire (in particular, his Zaire). The author, a member of the Berlin Academy, and editor for a time of both the Gazette de France and the Mercure de France, wrote other works on the theater, and at least two plays of his own. One of the most influential books in the history of acting.