Notes d'un voyage fait dans le Levant en 1816 et 1817

First edition (Cf. Blackmer 485. Loukia Droulia 1123. Atabey 350: "Scarce". Quérard II, 557. Brunet IV, 110.)

Contemporary half tan calf, spine with four raised bands bordered with faded gilt decorative rolls and tooled with gilt rolls and blind-stamped ornaments, modern black morocco lettering-piece, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, marbled edges.

Some rubbing to spine and boards, occasional foxing.

The work was printed in a small number of copies and was not commercially issued.The announced second part was never published.

It contains observations on Constantinople, Egypt and the Holy Land, Syria and Asia Minor. A chapter devoted to Corsica escaped the notice of Starace.

"Didot spent his youth studying the classics with Koraïs. It was the latter who encouraged Didot to travel in the Levant, and this work is dedicated to him. Although Didot's philhellenism is not much known at large, he still remains the most important of the French philhellenes. This is the only account of his travels, and concerns his sojourns in Cydonia on the coast of Asia Minor (Ayvalik), at that time one of the centres of Greek culture in the Levant, where he went to perfect his Greek"[Leonora Navari].

These notes were published by the author's father, who used for the preface to Coray the cursive Anglaise typeface of his own invention, first employed in his 1806 edition of Virgil.

Referring to this typeface, Ambroise Firmin Didot relates that when Bodoni "vit pour la première fois imprimés les caractères imitant l'écriture gravés et fondus par mon père d'après les procédés de son invention, il ne put comprendre comment, par des moyens typographiques, un pareil résultat avait pu être obtenu".