Abrègé Historique Des Sciences Et Des Beaux-Arts, En Latin Et En François.
Bruges, J. van Praet and Paris, G. Debure 1781.
8vo (169 x 99 mm.). [iv], xvii, 464 [r. 463]p. TWO TEXT WOODCUTS, woodcut ornaments (many signed Le Brun).
Contemporary blind-ruled mottled calf, gilt spine and red morocco label, gilt-ruled board edges, marbled endleaves, red edges, green silk marker.
First Edition of a bilingual Latin-French Encyclopédie for children, covering forty trades, professions, academic disciplines and the arts and sciences.
Infused with a belief “in the march of human progress” (p. xvi, tr.), the text proceeds from religion, languages, writing, printing (Chap. 4, 12pp.), logic, morals, metaphysics, geography, history and law to mathematics, algebra, optics, navigation, astronomy, painting, sculpture, engraving, architecture, anatomy, medicine, botany and commerce. The work is cast as a series of questions and answers, the Latin facing the French (versos and rectos, respectively). The footnotes, numbering in the hundreds, serve as explainers, reading list and bibliography. The vernacular entries are both more fulsome and more detailed.
The work was reprinted twice, at Dresden and Lausanne, the latter edition at least with just the French text. Of the three printings, the monolingual is the only represented in U.S. libraries (a single copy). In good condition (three quires slightly browned), signature of Jean-Baptiste Jacob, professor emeritus at the Collège royal de Verdun (retired 1791), title stamp of EP.
¶Conlon 81:1056; Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes I: 45; Quérard, La France littéraire II: 642.
Price: $2,750.00