A case of curiosities /
Kurzweil, Allen,
A case of curiosities / Allen Kurzweil. - 1st edition. - ix, 358 pages ; 25 cm
In France, on the eve of the Revolution, a young man named Claude Page sets out to become the most ingenious and daring inventor of his time. In the course of a career filled with violence and passion, Claude learns the arts of enameling and watchmaking from an irascible, defrocked abbé, apprentices himself to a pornographic bookseller, and applies his erotic erudition to the seduction of the wife of an impotent wigmaker. But it is Claude's greatest device--a talking mechanical head--that both crowns his career and leads to an execution as tragic as that of Marie Antoinette, and far more bizarre.--Publisher description.
0151157936 9780151157938
91016990
1700-1799
Inventors--Fiction.
Inventors.
France--History--18th century--Fiction.
France.
Fiction France Novel Breguet Watch (general)
Historical fiction.
Fiction.
History.
Historical fiction.
A case of curiosities / Allen Kurzweil. - 1st edition. - ix, 358 pages ; 25 cm
In France, on the eve of the Revolution, a young man named Claude Page sets out to become the most ingenious and daring inventor of his time. In the course of a career filled with violence and passion, Claude learns the arts of enameling and watchmaking from an irascible, defrocked abbé, apprentices himself to a pornographic bookseller, and applies his erotic erudition to the seduction of the wife of an impotent wigmaker. But it is Claude's greatest device--a talking mechanical head--that both crowns his career and leads to an execution as tragic as that of Marie Antoinette, and far more bizarre.--Publisher description.
0151157936 9780151157938
91016990
1700-1799
Inventors--Fiction.
Inventors.
France--History--18th century--Fiction.
France.
Fiction France Novel Breguet Watch (general)
Historical fiction.
Fiction.
History.
Historical fiction.