[Typography of exotic alphabets] Caracteres et Alphabets de langues mortes et vivantes

Contenant vingt-cinq Planches. Extract from the folio edition: Diderot, Denis, & Jean Le Rond d'Alambert. Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers. Recueil de Planches, sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Mechaniques, avec leur Explication. [Paris, 1762-'72]. Folio, new halfcloth binding with marbled cased boards, 17 pp., 25 plates in copper engraving by Niodot after Goussier or Des Hauterayes.

Stand-alone extract of part of a text from the folio edition of the Encyclopedie and the accompanying plates from the Récueil de Planches. Plates with images of alphabets from more than forty languages, from Assyrian and Hebrew to Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese and Bengali; the accompanying text provides a detailed explanation of the level of scientific knowledge on these subjects in the second half of the 18th century.