[LAMOTHE-LANGON, ETIENNE-LEON], Cagliostro; ou, L’intrigant et le cardinal, par l’auteur des Memoires de Madame DuBarry et de Mademoiselle Duthe.

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Original label on frontcover 'Uit de Lees-bibliotheek van A. Bakhuyzen, Boekverkoper in Hoogstraat te 's Gravenhage'. French novel. Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (1743 – 1795) was the alias of the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo. He was an Italian adventurer and self-styled magician. He became a glamorous figure associated with the royal courts of Europe where he pursued various occult arts, including psychic healing, alchemy and scrying. His reputation lingered for many decades after his death, but continued to deteriorate, as he came to be regarded as a charlatan and impostor, this view fortified by the savage attack of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) in 1833, who pronounced him the ‘Quack of Quacks’. Later works-such as that of W.R.H. Trowbridge (1866-1938) in his Cagliostro: the Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic (1910), attempted a rehabilitation.