Author: Tardieu, A.
Title: Entretiens sur la minéralogie d'apres la méthode du célèbre Haüy.
Description: Paris, Boulland, 1825. 8vo (16.7 x 9.8 cm). viii, 528 pp.; three engraved portraits (of Haüy [frontispiece], Thénard [opposite p. 177] and Biot [opposite p. 337)], 12 folded engraved plates, several tables. Contemporary full calf. Boards with gilt ornamented borders and dentelles, front board with the large gilt vignette of the College Royal de Louis le Grand, spine rich gilt and with green morocco label with gilt title. Marbled endpapers, edges marbled. = This well-illustrated work introduces the mineralogical system of Haüy to a broader public. The author, Ambroise Tardieu (1788-1841) was a French mineralogist, cartographer and engraver. His son, Auguste Ambroise Tardieu (1818-1879), was also an artist and a pioneering forensic medical scholar. This work has been written in the form of a dialogue between 'Mme de Beaumont', 'Gustave' and 'Caroline', and treats all kinds of minerals in 16 chapters. This Mme de Beaumont may well be based on an actual person, but not the wife of the famous geologist Jean-Baptiste Armand Louis Léonce Élie de Beaumont (1798-1874), as he was single until, in 1859, he married the poet Thérèse Marie Augusta Quélen (1806-1866). The title page states that there are 23 plates, but that is an error. The 12th plate says: "Pl. XII et dernière". The plates mainly show crystal forms, two plates include tools, and one shows minerals. An extraordinary copy, with additional portraits. The two "extra" portraits are in exactly the same style, and on the same paper, as Hauy's. However, they are not recorded in any other copy. In fact, several copies on the internet do not only lack these two portraits, but lack the Hauy-portrait too. The extra portraits show the French chemist Baron Louis Jacques Thénard (1777-1857), and the French chemist, physicist, and astronomer Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774-1862). Top hinges starting, otherwise a very good, attractively bound copy. Not in Ward and Carozzi.

Keywords: