RAVENEAU, Jacques.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Traité des inscriptions Second and earliest feasibly obtainable edition, the Fletcher de Saltoun copy, of the first manual on the detection of forged documents. A pioneering work in the scientific study of handwriting, it teaches how to identify different types of fakes, discusses penmanship, paper, and erasures, and provides a recipe for an invisible ink.The treatise was published in Paris the year before "chez l'Auteur", with a privilege dated July 1665. No copies of the first edition are traced in auction records, and only one is recorded in libraries worldwide, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Sauvy notes that the BNF copy bears a privilege dated July 1665 and a manuscript note indicating that such privilege had been obtained improperly. Presumably, Raveneau (died c.1683 had to delay publication until he secured a legitimate privilege du Roy, which is included in this second edition and dated April 1666. Raveneau was a maître écrivain and forensic writing expert. Traité des inscriptions is a "pivotal work - the one which, until recent years and before the use of laboratory methods, remained the most comprehensive, the most insightful, and the model to follow... [Raveneau] knows how to determine whether handwriting is old or freshly done, whether certain lines or words were added, whether there was any addition, subtraction, or replacement of pages, alterations, or substitution of one number for another" (trans from Locard, p. 11).Parisian authorities suppressed th

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.