Tableau Dressé pour F. Trompette, agent d'affaires en librarie pour M.-A. Mariani.

£2,000 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

This curious production was almost certainly made for French classrooms and features information enabling trade. There are three tables: the first being for straightforward multiplication, the next gives conversions of foreign currencies into French francs, the third calculates daily expenditure based on annual earnings. This is accompanied by a list of various French departments - Jura, Loire, Somme, Gironde et al - with their capitals, population breakdown, plus agriculture and manufacturing products. This information is augmented by the portraits and biographies of eight famous explorers, naval commanders, and corsairs: Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), Francois l’Olonnais (1630-1669), Anne Hilarion de Tourville (1642-1706), Jean Bart (1650-1702), James Cook (1728-1779), Jean-François La Perouse (1741-1788), François-Paul Brueys (1753-1798), and Jules Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842). A rare survival with just a single copy recorded at the BnF.

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