Gaspard GUILLARD DE BEAURIEU

Rare first edition, published anonymously.
Contemporary full marbled and polished calf binding. Decorated spine with raised bands. Red morocco title label. Traces of rubbing. Missing the half-title of the first part. Handsome copy.
Philosophical tale in which a young man, first raised in a cage then cast onto a desert island, is educated by nature at the age of 15. Each experience becomes a discovery, either about the world or about himself. This young man thus embodies the scientist of modern times, virgin before things. Facing nature and far from civilization, man is fundamentally good according to the novel, but nature itself is not exempt from evils that man is called upon t