LAVOISIER, Antoine Laurent.

Paris: Deterville,1801

2 parts in 1 volume, 8vo, pp. xxx, (ii), 443, 3 folding engraved plates. Contemporary half sheep and speckled boards, flat spine gilt, blue morocco lettering piece on spine. A very fine copy.

Second edition of this “pioneer work in which [Lavoisier] first gives a historical survey of previous workers’ efforts and then describes his own experiments on gases and the conclusions to be derived from them” (Duveen & Klickstein, p. 94). “The genuine second edition in which Deterville has reprinted the entire book with the errata corrected in the text and with the plates re-engraved by Tardieu senior. Another so-called seconde edition published in 1801 is merely a reissue of the first edition, with the replacement of the dedication leaf to Trudaine de Montigny by a half-title and a new title-page, and with the same plates as the 1774 issue. The present edition is the first new printing of the Opuscules since Lavoisier’s death in 1794” (Neville). Cole 769. Duveen & Klickstein 123. Neville, II, p. 19: “It exerted a tremendous influence on Continental chemists and set the stage for Lavoisier’s overthrow of the phlogiston theory.”

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