Amsterdam (Pays-Bas)

Illustrated edition with 16 folding plates, 8 per volume.
Contemporary full marbled brown calf bindings. Raised band spines with gilt ornaments. Red morocco title-labels, and black wax volume labels. Small lack to head of volume I. One corner slightly bumped. Rubbing. Last errata leaf frayed at margin. Good copies.
Notable articles to be retained in each of the mentioned sections include the following: On beam resistance by M. Parent. On conchoids in general by M. de La Hire. Observations on coral analysis by M. Geoffroy. Reflections on magnetic variations by M. Houssaye. General method for finding an infinity of new curved lines by M. Réaumur. Physical explanation of the vertical and natural direction of plants by M. de La Hire. Method for describing large arcs of conic sections, by M. de La Hire. Conjectures on the position of the island of Meroë, by M. Delisle. Numerous astronomical observations by Cassini, Maraldi...

First French edition translated by Arnaud de la Chapelle. Title page in red and black.

Later 19th-century full red morocco binding with straight grain (Russia leather) signed by Thouvenin at tail. Spine with raised bands decorated with compartments framed by gilt fillets. Title and date in gilt. Gilt fillets framing the boards with trefoils in the corners. Inner gilt fillet. All edges gilt. Spine slightly faded. Rubbing to headcaps, joints and corners. Upper joint narrowly split at tail for 3 cm. One tear on p. 274, another on p. 302, both in the middle of the page. Despite some defects, a handsome copy.

    
20th-century engraved bookplate of E. Crawshaw.         

First edition, rare.
Half blond sheep bindings. Smooth spines decorated in the grotesque style. Red morocco title labels and beige morocco volume labels. Library labels at foot. Two small wormholes along the lower joint of volume I. A split with loss at the lower joint of volume II. A good, decorative copy.

First edition. Half-titles and title pages in red and black.

Contemporary binding in full marbled blonde sheep. Smooth spine decorated with four compartmentalized fleurons. Red morocco title-label. Triple fillet frame on boards. Red edges. A lack to the lower joint extending onto the spine. Rubbing to headcaps, joints and corners.
Armorial copy with unidentified arms at tail, argent, a chevron gules accompanied by three stars.
Good copy.

Pastiche of a Greek novel attributed by the author to Philidor, philosopher, who supposedly wrote it during his journey to Egypt. Story of the thwarted pastoral loves of Alzidor and Charizée who were raised together, the beauty disappearing when the shepherd discovers her naked. The whole is tinged with eroticism. One would have difficulty counting, at this period, the quantity of Greco-Latin novels that were written on the model of Daphnis and Chloe or the Aethiopica, it was a literary fashion to which numerous writers succumbed for the satisfaction of the public.
Engraved bookplate of Henri Pichot, President of Veterans during the interwar period.

New edition, following the first collected edition also published in Amsterdam in 1775 and produced by d'Holbach.
Contemporary full blonde calf bindings. Smooth spines richly decorated with gilt compartments and fleurons, as well as red morocco title labels and green volume labels with red morocco inlay. Fine gilt decorative board-edges framing the boards. Gilt roulettes on the leading edges and headcaps. All edges marbled.
Headcaps slightly rubbed and some minor wormholes. Each volume shows dampstaining to outer margin. Quite good copy, of handsome appearance.
The first volume contains the author's most famous text: L'Antiquité dévoilée, the second the Recherches sur le despotisme oriental, an Essai philosophique que le gouvernement as well as other texts: Esope fabuliste, Du bonheur, Le Christianisme dévoilé, Dissertation sur Elie et Enoch, Examen critique de Saint Paul and Dissertation sur Saint Pierre. The Extrait d'une lettre sur la vie et les ouvrages de Mr. Boulanger which precedes it would be by Diderot according to Grimm. Le Christianisme dévoilé would be by D'Holbach, while the Recherches sur le despotisme oriental is a collective work bringing together d'Holbach and Boulanger. Around Baron d'Holbach formed a sort of coterie (with authors such as Diderot, Boulanger or Naigeon), a spiritual association of figures who had all worked on the great work of the Encyclopédie and who assembled around a certain number of strong ideas: a critique of religious but also philosophical superstition, an atheistic materialism and a utilitarian politics; each of the authors worked toward the deconstruction of Christianity and the edification of materialism, achieving the true combat of the Enlightenment for man's liberation from religious, spiritual and political constraints.

New edition prepared by Lenglet Du Fresnoy, with his notes and a glossary. A handsome title vignette. The last early edition.

19th-century binding in red half morocco with corners, signed Bauzonnet. Spine with five raised bands richly decorated in the grotesque style. Double gilt fillet on the boards. Top edge gilt on deckled edges. Spine somewhat faded. Some marginal worming, otherwise a handsome copy.

Ex-libris of the L. Pasquier library pasted on the first endpaper.

The rare French first edition, illustrated with 9 folding plates containing 22 figures. The first edition, in Italian, dates from 1765. Two manuscript leaves in fine handwriting are bound at the rear on the properties of gunpowder, with a comparative table of tests for sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal.

Later binding, ca. 1830, in full glazed navy calf. Spine with raised bands handsomely decorated with central tool and corner tools in each compartment, roulette at head and foot, geometric roulette on bands, repeated as interior border. Green calf title-label. Framing border on boards. Edges gilt. Rubbing to boards, particularly the upper board, with scratches.

Important scientific treatise in the field, whose author was one of the most eminent specialists of his time. Besides being an engineer, Papacino d'Antoni was an artillery officer and director of the royal artillery and engineering school of Turin, and composed various military treatises. In this canonical scientific treatise on the chemistry and physics of gunpowder, the theories and hypotheses advanced by the author are demonstrated through multiple experiments.

Very handsome copy, exceptionally fresh, in an unsigned master binding.

First edition. Title page in red and black.

Contemporary full glazed blonde calf binding. Smooth spine decorated with foliage, stamps and fillets. Red morocco title-label. Monogram B.P. at foot. Small lack at head. Joints cracked at foot for 1cm. Corners rubbed. Leaf 53 repeated, same for leaf 73.

Handsome copy.

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.

Statement of second edition, the first edition having appeared in 1705. Each volume contains a trimester, and a title page for each month. The set thus comprises the months from January 1705 to June of the same year. General title page in red and black.
Armorial copy with the arms of the Riquet de Caraman family.
Contemporary full glazed blonde calf binding. Richly decorated spine with raised bands. Red morocco title label and volume labels.
The Nouvelles de la république des lettres was a monthly publication published from March 1684 to June 1718 (with a notable interruption from 1711 to 1715). This gazette was inaugurated by Pierre Bayle (11 volumes until February 1687), then continued by Le Clerc, Larroque, Barrin, Bernard. This review provided reviews of published books, in sciences, history, literature or other fields.

We thank Mr. Jérôme-Paul Carré for identifying the armorial device on the binding.

Eighth edition statement, illustrated with eight unsigned frontispieces. Les journées amusantes were originally published from 1722 to 1731. Title pages in red and black.

Contemporary full blonde sheep binding. Decorated spine with raised bands. Lacks to upper joints at head of volumes I and IV. Lack to headcap of volume III. Tail headcap of volume IV split. Some corners slightly bumped. Despite the noted defects, the set is in good condition overall.

A prolific author, Madame de Gomez achieved great favor in Europe with Les journées amusantes, which were undoubtedly one of the bestsellers of the period. These journées are similar in structure to Boccaccio's Decameron and to Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron. Composed of 18 days within which six narrators tell stories. What characterizes the writing of the Journées amusantes is the encyclopedic and erudite richness, characteristic of the work, which ultimately worked against it over time; it aimed, with a certain deliberate archaism, to pay homage to 17th-century French gallant literature.

First edition illustrated with two title vignettes designed by Picart.

19th-century black Bradel binding in full boards. Orange calf title labels. Small rubbing to headcap. Handsome copy.

A major work on generation and embryology, in which one discovers the hypothesis of chromosomes as well as that of environmental influence. Bonnet perfects his thesis according to which every being exists previously in germ form in nature, thus the embryo already exists in the seminal fluid, and generation is merely the simple development of the germ, which, from small, develops through nutrition; the germ already containing everything that will be developed. Although Bonnet develops the extensions and consequences of this fundamental postulate, this in no way prevents him from penetrating the mysteries of embryology and fertilization. The germ thesis seeming a middle ground between spontaneous generation and procreation, it appears a solution to the theoretical impasse to which spontaneous generation leads, contradicted by observations, in which Bonnet possesses great finesse. Bonnet is not only interested in mammals but extensively in plants and earthworms.

Librairie Alain Brieux label.

First edition.
Contemporary full brown calf binding. Spine with raised bands decorated with 5 fleurons. Red morocco title-label. Triple gilt fillet frame on boards. Rubbing to headcaps, joints, edges and corners. 2 corners slightly bumped. Good copy.
Treatise on the courtier, and the manner of conducting oneself with princes.

Fragility of the courtier's position and utility of diplomacy.

First edition of this French translation, illustrated with a frontispiece containing 3 figures and a title vignette by Quinau. A first translation had appeared under the title Hipparchus in 1645; one could not say however that this new translation carried out by a Protestant is literal, it is rather a free translation to which a pamphleteering charge has been added.
Contemporary full blonde sheep binding. Richly decorated raised spine. Beige morocco title-label. Wormholes on spine with a lack to title-label. Handsome copy nevertheless.
There would be according to the author, both a reprehensible commerce and one that would not be so.

Second edition, rare, after the first edition published in 1698 by Barbin.

Contemporary full brown sheep binding. Decorated spine with raised bands. Head worn. Rubbing. Foxing.

The work belongs to no defined genre; in a very free manner, a Siamese tells anecdotes which he mixes with maxims on various subjects: The palace, the court, the public, the Bois de Boulogne, the opera... These satirical considerations of Parisian society, pell-mell, do not possess a continuous narrative; the work would pave the way for Montesquieu's Persian Letters. It is one of its principal sources.

New edition and first printing of the illustrations: a frontispiece, 62 plates and 241 in-text figures as well as a folding plate on the organization of a Roman camp.
Title page in red and black.

Later 19th-century half-vellum binding. Unlettered smooth spine.

Rare first edition of this literary hoax, spuriously attributed by the translator to Cadmus of Miletus in a lengthy explanatory preface. Illustrated with a frontispiece after Cochin.
Contemporary full blond calf binding. Spine gilt-tooled between raised bands. Red morocco title label. Headcap partly worn and upper joint split at the head. Surface abrasions to the boards.

Elzevier edition of these tragedies by Seneca with the highly esteemed notes by the English grammarian Thomas Farnaby (or Farnabie). The first edition with Farnaby's notes is that of London, 1613. Brunet V, 286. Illustrated with an engraved title-frontispiece.

Contemporary full navy blue morocco binding, raised spine decorated in grotesque style (rolls composed of lozenges within circles), sawtooth fillet border and wave roll border on covers, gilt edges, interior fillet.

Very handsome antique morocco binding.

Third and best edition of this apology for polygamy, the first dated from 1674 and comprised 96 p., the second was expanded in 1676 to 174 p., this final edition making 565 p. Most major libraries do not possess it, such as the BNF. Graesse, I, 68. Rare.

Contemporary full vellum binding, title in manuscript. Joint cracked at head.

Lyser (1631-1684) devoted his life and fortune in the hope of founding a sect of polygamists, he thus visited Europe, seeking followers and preaching that polygamy is most often a requirement. The book was condemned and numerous copies were burned.

This is the penultimate edition of the most famous historical dictionary, an inexhaustible source that remains highly sought after for both history and genealogy. This edition was refined by Platel and considerably expanded. The first edition was the only one published during the author's lifetime, in 1664, in one folio volume.
Bindings in full dark brown glazed mottled calf, spine with raised bands decorated with animal tools, red morocco title labels. Unidentified arms on the boards (possibly of a town or the Oormsgard family, but non-French arms) with a lion facing forward (and not in profile as usual) holding a castle.
Copy complete with the frontispiece.
Volume I has the upper joint cracked two-thirds of the way and both headcaps worn, the other 7 volumes are in good condition with various minor defects. Volume 2, a tear with loss to the upper headcap, small damage to the joints. Volume VI, a tear with slight loss to the upper headcap. Volume VII, lower joint cracked and open for one-third. Volume VIII, a tear to the upper headcap with small loss, 10 cm splits to both joints. Handsome copy nonetheless.