Description:
12mo, pp. [ii], 11-372; with two folding maps and eight engraved plates; prelims excised (see below); small hole to O3, just touching the edge of a letter on each side, and occasional light spotting and browning, but otherwise clean and fresh throughout; in contemporary calf, flat spine gilt with skiver lettering-piece, red edges; somewhat worn and extremities bumped; 'De Pl. Villeneuve' stencilled on rear free endpaper, and some pen trials on both pastedowns.Unrecorded issue of this general introduction to the arts and sciences for school children, first published in 1808 with Bruyset ainé and Buynard in Lyon, by the little-known Grenoble journalist and pedagogue Louis Barthélemey (1759-1815).
The work is largely arranged in the form of a catechism, and leads the reader, with no apparent logic in the order, through sections on religion, the nature of the sciences and the liberal arts, philosophy, physics, meteorology, earthquakes, jurisprudence, medicine and botany, rhetoric, poetry, language, the… Read More