Discours préliminaire au nouveau dictionnaire de la langue française

First edition. Two editions appeared at the same time, this one, and a second in Hamburg, published by Fauche. See Tchemerzine V, 409. The continuation of this preliminary discourse, as well as the famous dictionary, would never see the light of day. The second text appeared for the first time in Berlin in 1784, closely following the "subject proposed by the Berlin Academy".
Tchemerzine V, 403: 'Cette édition, très bien imprimée, est aussi recherchée que l'originale'.
Half black shagreen Jansenist binding from the mid-19th century. Spine with 4 raised bands.
The preliminary discourse is an ambitious work, simultaneously a reflection on phonetics, a linguistic reflection, and a book on the philosophy of language, which considers that one cannot speak of man, and of the world of ideas, without speaking of language and speech. The second work is a monument erected to the glory of the French language, "what is not clear is not French". Born Rivaroli, son of an Italian innkeeper, Antoine Rivarol, tutor in Lyon then in Paris, introduced himself into the salons by calling himself Count de Rivarol; he would be famous in his time for combating the celebrities of the moment, writers or philosophers, against Beaumarchais, Buffon or Mirabaud, with violence and real talent for satire and polemic.