Mazarinades Collection

Date range: 17th century

Medium: Printed

Number of items: 1,800 items.

These pamphlets, often scurrilous and mainly anonymous, were written in protest at, or sometimes in defence of, Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–61) and his policies at the time of the Fronde, the series of civil wars which afflicted France during the minority of Louis XIV. The collection comprises more than 1,800 pamphlets, printed mainly between 1649 and 1652.

More than one third of the items listed in the two standard bibliographies of Moreau and of Lindsay and Neu are available.

The collection is enhanced with engraved portraits of the political figures of the period.

Further information:

• Recorded in Library Search.
• C. Moreau, Choix de mazarinades (Paris, 1853). An annotated copy of this bibliography is available via the Special Collections Reading Rooms.
• Notes in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 37 (1954-5), pp. 8-9; vol. 38 (1955-6), pp. 5-6; vol. 44 (1961-2), pp. 280-1.
• John P. Tuck, 'French Studies: A Guide to Research Resources in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester', Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, vol. 72, no. 2 (1990), pp. 9-10.

Location:

• The John Rylands Library, Deansgate  [Map]
• Find out how to use the reading rooms in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library