Emile, ou De l'education.

First duodecimo edition, or first edition in 12mo format, illustrated with five fine plates by Eisen, including two in the first volume and one frontispiece in each of the remaining three. Title pages printed in red and black. As expected, the first volume has no half-title, unlike the other three volumes.

Contemporary full mottled calf binding. Smooth spines richly decorated. Tan morocco title and volume labels. Blue sprinkled edges. Small loss at the head of volume III, short wormtrack at the head of volume I, rubbing marks. Loss to the lower margin corner of the final leaf of volume I. A handsome copy.

According to McEachern (Bibliography of the writings of J.J. Rousseau), this edition was printed before the original octavo edition published by Duchesne, although it was released after the octavo. After signing a contract with the Maréchale de Luxembourg for the publication rights to Émile, Duchesne reached an agreement in November 1761 with the publisher Jean Néaulme for an edition to be published outside France. He first printed the Dutch edition (which was in fact printed in Paris) with Amsterdam as the place of publication, and then reimposed these volumes in octavo format with The Hague as the place of publication. This edition should not be confused with the counterfeit dated 1762, which has a different collation. However, it is noteworthy that this 12mo edition does not contain the same typographical errors as the octavo edition, and it also presents several peculiarities noted by Rochebilière (Bibliographie des éditions originales d'auteurs français...): in volume I, page 10 of the octavo, the word appears as L'essenciel, while in the 12mo it is L'essentiel. It is known that Rousseau himself corrected proofs for the 12mo edition. It must therefore be assumed that the 12mo edition benefited from Rousseau's corrections, whereas the octavo was printed directly from the uncorrected 12mo.