James Paris du Plessis ( in

Pithiviers Pithiviers () is a commune in the Loiret department, north central France. It is one of the subprefectures of Loiret. It is twinned with Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, England and Burglengenfeld in Bavaria, Germany. Its attractions in ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

) was a servant of the famous 17th-century

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

diarist

Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys ( ; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English writer and Tories (British political party), Tory politician. He served as an official in the Navy Board and Member of Parliament (England), Member of Parliament, but is most r ...

and the author of "A Short History of Human Prodigies, and Monstrous Births: of Dwarfs, Sleepers, Giants, Strong Men, Hermaphrodites, Numerous Births, and Extreme Old Age, &c.", an unpublished manuscript he produced between 1730 and 1733 that is preserved in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

. Du Plessis' bizarre 320-page manuscript is illustrated with his own hand-coloured drawings. These include "John Grimes, a Dwarf", "Two Sisters conjoined", "A Woman Seven foot High", "A Woman with a Hog's Face", "A Spotted Negro Prince" and "The Monstrous Tartar". The section headed "A Wild Girl found Near Chalons in Champagne" contains the earliest-known report in English of Marie-Angélique Memmie Le Blanc, the famous

feral child A feral child (also called wild child) is a young individual who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, with little or no experience of human care, social behavior, or language. Such children lack the basics of primary and ...

of 18th-century France. Shortly before his death, du Plessis offered the manuscript and its illustrations to Sir

Hans Sloane Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet, (16 April 1660 – 11 January 1753), was an Irish physician, naturalist, and collector. He had a collection of 71,000 items which he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British ...

and they became part of Sloane's foundational collection of the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

. According to the novelist

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

, du Plessis' fascination with human strangeness and prodigies of all kinds began in his youth when he dug up the body of a stillborn two-headed child, a cousin, in the garden of his family home at Pithiviers in north-central France.Surekha Davies, "Monsters Incorporated: Framing Anatomical Difference in Early Modern England", abstract of paper delivered to the 126th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, 8 January 201

Retrieved 22 September 2013.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Plessis, James Paris du 1660s births 1735 deaths English non-fiction writers English male non-fiction writers