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The prospectus to a new commercial dictionary of "world-class" which never was published

MORELLET, André.
Prospectus d'un dictionnaire de commerce.






Paris, Les freres Estienne, 1769. 8vo. Contemporary calf, spine gilt in compartments with floral ornaments and dark brown title-label, gilt triple fillet border on both sides, gilt inner dentelles over beautifully gilt decorated endpapers, g.e. VIII, 381, (3), 34 pp.

Beautiful copy of an interesting prospectus, by André Morellet (1727-1819), announcing a new commercial dictionary in 5 volumes folio. In this work he starts in the first part with the argumentation on why it is so necessary to produce a new dictionary. For this purpose he describes extensively the commercial dictionary by Jacques Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire Universel de Commerce. First published in 1723 and several  times reprinted and the first commercial dictionary in Europe. He also mentions some English dictionaries by Mr. Postletwayth, Mr. Rolt and Mr. Mortimer, and a German and  Portuguese translation of the French dictionary. All his criticism concerning those dictionaries can be summarized in saying that he finds them all far from complete, letting out many interesting details and he states that they are not as universal as they claim to be.
So Morellet proposes to a new, complete, universal commercial dictionary in this prospectus in which he also describes the diffrences between his suggestions and the way these are or are not described in the previous works. The prospectus is very detailed and orderly set up, not surprising considering the fact that with this work he needed to convince his public of the necessity of such an extensive and therefor probably expensive dictionary. He had to persuade them to subscribe to the work in order to raise the necessary funds to finance his project.
However the dictionary itself was never published. Morellet dedicated 20 years to it, but was interrupted by the French Revolution. A part of the material was in 1800 used by Jacques Peuchet in his Dictionaire universel de la géographie commerçante.
At the end of the work there is a Catalogue d'une bibliothèque d'économie politique, giving a list of works which are necessary for composing the new commercial dictionary.

Splendid copy in beautiful binding.
Goldsmith 10507; Kress 6663; Einaudi 4024.

Related Subjects: Commerce  Economy  History 

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