DE L'ESPRIT DES LOIS - 1748: [ ANNOTATED ]

[ IMPORTANT 2nd EDITION, 1st STATE, OF DE L'ESPRIT DES LOIS ]

[ VERY RARE WITH SOME HANDWRITTEN ANNOTATIONS BY AN 18TH CENTURY READER ]

-

MONTESQUIEU,

De l'esprit des lois,

Genève, Barillot et Fils [Paris, Prault, 1748].

2 vol., 4to, contemporary calf, [4] f., XXIV-552 p., [1] f. (errata) + [2] f., XVI-564 p.

Important second edition in its first issue of De l'Esprit des Lois, printed in Paris by Prault, the only one to include the errata leaf (Tchemerzine IV, 930). A very rare copy with some annotations by a reader of the time, who completed his copy in the 1760s, with a dozen of notes of 2 to 5 lines each. These notes are mainly adding passages from the 1758 edition, which the reader points out. He also adds cross-references & sources. He adds for example (volume 2, p. 476): "The edition of 1758 adds here a short chapter on the adoption of germans, one gives there for example what Gontran did, when he adopted and declared major his nephew Childebert (volume 2, p. 476)".

Very rare testimony on a reading of Montesquieu at the time of the Enlightenment.

Copies with annotations (even a few) of De L'esprit des Lois are very uncommon !