Susanne Schulz-Falster Catalogue Ten - Schulz-Falster Rare Books

54 BREITHAUPT, Christian. Ars decifratoria sive Scientia
Occultas Scripturas solvendi et legendi. Praemissa est Disquisitio
Historica de variis Modis occulte Scribendi tam apud veteres
quam recentiores Visitatis. Helmstedt, Christ. Fried. Weiygand,
1737. £500
8vo, pp. 32, 160, [12] index, with one folding printed table bound in;
engraved cryptographic title vignette and numerous diagrams, tables
and specimens of encryption in the text; paper lightly browned, title
dust-soiled; indestructibly bound in modern half morocco over cloth
boards.
First edition of this valuable introduction to the history and art of cryptography.
Cryptographic methods included among others alphabetic substitutions,
ciphers, dislocation of letters, invented symbols, and corrupt forms of
foreign alphabets. Cryptography was mostly used in secret diplomacy.
Breithaupt, (1689–1749), a professor of philosophy in Helmstedt, covers
the period from Trithemius to Leibniz. Numerous methods are illustrated
in the text and the folding table shows Kircher’s Abacus numeralis. Ten
years earlier, Breithaupt had already published an essay entitled Disquisitio
historica, critica, curiosa de variis modis occulte scribendi, which is reprinted
here.
Ackermann I, 37; Galland, p. 29; Rosenthal 6031.
55 BROWN, Goold. The Wrst Lines of English Grammar; being a
brief Abstract of the Author’s larger Work. Designed for Young
Learners. New York, Samuel S. & William Wood, 1858. £60
8vo, pp. 108; some spotting due to paper stock; bound in the original
roan-backed printed boards, boards and corners a little rubbed.
A children’s introduction to English Grammar, condensed from Brown’s
more extensive work The Institutes of English Grammar. Judging by the date
susanne schulz-falster rare books catalogue ten
of the preface this epitome was Wrst published in 1826. Brown covers orthography,
etymology, syntax and prosody.
Not found in Kennedy.
English Society in Decline
56 [BROWN, John.] Les moeurs angloises, ou appréciation des
moeurs et des principes qui caracterisent actuellement la Nation
Britannique. La Haye, Pierre Gosse, 1758. £300
12mo, pp. [iv], 194, [2], title vignette and typographic head and tailpieces;
uncut in contemporary marbled wrappers, slight wear to spine;
early ownership inscription to verso of front free endpaper.
First edition of Charles Chais’ French translation of John Brown’s popular
Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times; another edition (pp. 242)
had been publishd earlier the same year. John Brown had published his
blanket condemnation of ‘unmanly dissipation’ and his attack on ‘vain,
luxurious, and selWsh eVeminacy’ which he detected in English society at the
time in 1757. He maintained that luxury and reWnement were weakening
the moral Wbre of the nation, and were a consequence of an advanced commercial
society, foreign, especially French inXuences, and the increased role
of women in society. Brown explicitly makes this point when he complains
that ‘the one sex have advanced in boldness, as the other have sunk into
eVeminacy’ (after Brewer, p. 80). This English self-castigation clearly appealed
to the French, as another translation had been published the same
year.
Eddy 54 (listing four copies, Bodleian, National Library of Scotland, Newberry
Library and Stadtbibliothek Zürich).
Communism Made Easy
57 BUONARROTI, Philippe. Système politique et social des
Égaux ... extrait du livre de Ph. Buonarroti. Paris, Bureau du
Journal la Fraternité, 1842. £500
Small 16mo, pp. 108; some dust-soiling to title page, very faint
dampstain to gutter margin; uncut in contemporary half blue morocco,
spine decoratively gilt; some surface wear to upper boards, still an
attractive copy.
First edition, very rare, of these extracts from Buonarroti’s Conspiration de
l’Égalité dite de Babeuf, a blueprint for the establishment of communism by
force. Buonarroti (1761–1837), the lone survivor of the Babouvian plot
against the government, was the connecting link between the Babouvists
and the socialists of the July monarchy. Through his works the communist
ideas of an egalitarian revolution, the abolition of private property, starting
with Babeuf in the French Revolution, were carried over into the Revolution
of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871.