The most complete collective edition ever published, expanded, reorganized and corrected by the author himself as he explains in the Notice on this new edition. This edition therefore contains works not yet published. Maupertuis specifies that it is a selection of his best works. Title pages in red and black. This edition would be reprinted in 1768 by the same publisher. A frontispiece portrait painted by Tournière and engraved by Dallé representing the author in his travel attire for Lapland. A map of the meridian arc in volume II. Numerous mathematical diagrams in volume IV.
Contemporary full marbled brown sheep bindings. Raised band spines with ornament. Red morocco title labels and volume labels. Headcaps worn, very worn at head. Title label of volume I partly lacking. Joints of volume II partly narrowly cracked. 10 corners bumped. Bookplates scraped from pastedowns.
Details of the works: Volume I: Essay on cosmology. Discourse on the different figures of the stars. Essay on moral philosophy. Philosophical reflections on the origin of languages. Volume II: Physical Venus. System of nature. Letters. Letter on the progress of sciences. Volume III: Elements of geography. Account of the voyage made to the polar circle. Account of a voyage to the depths of Lapland. Letter on the comet of 1742. Academic discourses. Dissertation on the different means men have used to express their ideas. Volume IV: Harmony of the different laws of nature. Nautical astronomy. Discourse on the parallax of the moon. Operations to determine the figure of the earth...
An illustrious scientist of the French Enlightenment, and a divergent mind compared to the prevailing discourse of French science, Maupertuis's sagacity was exercised in several scientific fields: natural sciences (his hypotheses are very close to natural selection and transformism), biology and genetics of which he was a shrewd precursor, astronomy, with the adoption of Newtonian principles including universal attraction against Descartes's theory of vortices prevalent in France, mathematics, with the principle of least action of which he was one of the first discoverers, cosmology where his voyage to Lapland and the pole proved him right against Cassini (the earth being indeed flatter at the poles)...
First edition printed in a small number of copies on laid paper.
Precious and rare signed autograph inscription from Paul Lintier: " A mon vieux Béraud avec toute mon amitié..." ["To my old friend Béraud with all my friendship..."]
Preface by Henri Béraud.
Work illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of Adrien Bas by Francisque Laurent.
Three lacks to spine, small marginal lacks to boards which also show a light dampstain, handsome interior condition.
Provenance: from Henri Béraud's library on the Île de Ré.
First edition published anonymously in Lyon and not in Amsterdam as stated on the title page. The second edition published on the same date by the same publisher has different pagination and a smaller format (12mo); it should not be confused with the true first edition (64 pp. for ours versus 96 pp. for the other).
Binding in full vellum. Endpapers replaced.
This is a pamphlet in which the author attacks and ridicules the principal physicians of the period, and expounds the main features of his materialist doctrine. The book was condemned to be torn and burned by order of Parliament on July 9, 1746. Too often forgotten is that La Mettrie was himself a military physician before being forced to abandon his post and expatriate due to his publications. Through a fiction in which a traveler embarks for China to study medicine and Chinese physicians, a satire of contemporary medicine and its physicians; the work purports to be a translation from Chinese of a great medical manuscript.
All early editions of this text have now become rare.
Our copy presents in the margins, in pen, the "keys" to all the portraits of the supposed Chinese physicians composing the work.
Two editions appeared simultaneously with the same collation, one with the address of the hôtel de Thou and this one, presumably the privilege was given to both publishers for this first edition; it is illustrated with a portrait of the author as frontispiece by Louis-Joseph Duplessi engraved by Nicolas de Launay; some head- and tailpieces on wood.
Copy in original wrappers under pale pink temporary covers, spine with manuscript title. Half-title page torn at top as well as some dampstains; lacks at head, otherwise good copy.
New edition for Polydore Vergil's book of inventions and first edition for Cicero's sentences. Fine italic impressions. Printer's devices on the title page. The Cicero edition is absent from English catalogues.
De rerum inventoribus was placed on the Index and republished in 1575 in an expurgated form, and the edition we present is therefore not expurgated. The first French translation appears to have been published in 1527 according to a copy at the University of Glasgow, although contradictory information gives 1528 as the date of the first French edition in Latin by Robert Estienne. Brunet gives 1499 for the date of the first edition.
Half marbled blonde sheep binding, early 19th century. Smooth spine with three fleurons. Beige title and volume labels. Missing endpaper on upper board of volume 1 and on lower board of volume 2. Very fresh interior.
New edition, being a reprint of the original edition published in 1839.
A few minor spots of foxing, mainly affecting the edges; pencil annotations by a previous owner to the title page.
Bound in green Russian half morocco, spine with five raised bands, marbled paper boards, pebble-grained endpapers and pastedowns, doublure covers preserved, sprinkled top edge.
Illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of Marc Seguin the Elder, complete with the folding plan and six folding plates at the end of the volume.
