St Aubin Project
This Project, which was established in 2007, is funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Project Grant (2007-10). Principal Investigator is Professor Colin Jones, and Co-Investigators are Pippa Shirley (Head of Collections, Waddesdon Manor) and Juliet Carey (Paintings and Drawings, Waddesdon Manor). Dr Emily Richardson is Research Assistant on the Project.
The Project focuses on the highly unusual eighteenth-century book of caricatures, 'Livre des caricatures tant bonnes que mauvaises' which is held at Waddesdon Manor. The book is a collective entreprise, composed by the Saint-Aubin brothers, notably Charles-Germain, and appears to have been composed between the 1740s and 1770s. It was familiarly known as their livre de culs ('book of arses'), and is shot through with an irreverent and sometimes politically dangerous humour.
Had it become publicly known in the eighteenth century, it would probably have been burnt, and its authors placed in the Bastille.
The Project intends to digitise the volume and to place it on the web in the form of an critical edition. Other outputs include published articles by the investigators and a volume of collected essays, to be based on a conference on the volume to be held in 2009-10.
Fuller details will be carried on Professor Colin Jones’ web site.