[LA BARTHE, Abb é de].

£3,950 · Offered by Sokol Books

.A rich and fascinating late eighteenth-century French manuscript containing lectures on physics delivered in 1762 at the Academy of Sciences in Paris by Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700-1770), apparently belonging to a characterful French Enlightenment intellectual, with further extensive notes on physics, including diagrams and tables, as well as medicinal receipts and accounts. Part of the manuscript refers to the management of the Ferme de Monziols or Marvejols in Loz√®re, southern France, owned by the la Barthe family (the name appears on p. 200 in this manuscript as the name given to some land undergoing ameliorations ); construction of the property was begun in 1702 and completed in 1725. The Abb é la Barthe (1721-1801), who inherited in 1759, studied in Auvergne and Paris presumably mathematics and physics before serving as an artillery officer in the War of the Austrian Succession; on the pastedown he records buying a book in 1767 chez Jombert libraire , i.e. the Parisian bookseller Charles-Antoine Jombert (1712-84), who specialised in books on military science and artillery. In Paris, La Barthe associated with intellectuals including Charles Marie de la Condamine (1701-74), French explorer, mathematician and contributor to Diderot s Encyclop édie. Though the book is not signed anywhere by la Barthe, the dates fit perfectly, as does the scientific and experimental nature of the manuscript s contents, revealing a fascination with scientific methodology and instruments, as we

• Binding: Hardcover

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