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x, 301, [4, ads] pp. Ten portrait plates. Extra-illustrated with forty-five additional portraits, mostly engraved (two hand-colored) and from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Octavo, half brown morocco over marbled boards. Spine decoratively tooled in gilt and blind, with five raised bands' top edge gilt. With one leaf of manuscript by Voltaire laid in. 

The manuscript page is part of a letter, and is dated in a different hand, “5 fevr. 1749”; Voltaire offers to send a third party, whom he characterizes as a fine citizen and a great thinker, his last copy of one of his works, a copy he was using to produce a new edition. Subjects of the portraits include Descartes, Franklin, Louis XVI, Catherine the Great, Rousseau, Beaumarchais, Euler, Pascal and others. 

Donated by Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, Los Angeles, CA.