61 - BEAUMARCHAIS (Pierre-Augustin Caron de). Piece signed in his capacity as “general correspondent” of the Société littéraire typographique. No place, no date. One oblong in-12 page, printed with handwritten additions.

BEAUMARCHAIS (Pierre-Augustin Caron de). Piece signed in his capacity as “general correspondent” of the Société littéraire typographique. No place, no date. One oblong in-12 page, printed with handwritten additions. EXTREMELY RARE RECEIPT FOR A SUBSCRIPTION TO THE “COMPLETE WORKS OF M. DE VOLTAIRE, 60 vols., in-8° [sic]”: “We acknowledge that Mr. Duffaut, chief lieutenant at the [presidential] garrison of Auch, has subscribed under serial number 1,522 for a copy of the complete edition of the Works of Mr. de Voltaire, 8vo, printed in a run of four thousand, numbered from 1 to 4,000, printed in Baskerville type on so-called “grand missel fin” paper, the finest quality in France: for which we have received the sum of seventy-two livres, which will be credited toward the three hundred sixty livres, the price of the said unbound copy [...]” THE MONUMENTAL EDITION OF VOLTAIRE’S WORKS PRINTED IN KEHL, FINANCED BY BEAUMARCHAIS AND EDITED BY CONDORCET, stands out as the most complete, the most beautiful, and the best organized of this author’s works published to date. In addition to Voltaire’s literary, historical, and philosophical works, it includes, for the first time, several plays, unpublished texts, and above all his correspondence—undoubtedly his most engaging and vivid body of work. Beaumarchais spared no effort to bring this colossal undertaking to fruition: he purchased the typefaces from the English printer Baskerville, acquired three paper mills in the Vosges, spent a fortune acquiring Voltaire’s letters and manuscripts, and in 1780 established a massive “Imprimerie de la Société littéraire typographique,” which he set up near Strasbourg, in Kehl in the Margraviate of Baden, a territory sheltered from French censorship. He served as “general correspondent” for this printing house, which was placed under the direction of Jean-François Le Tellier and later Jacques-Gilbert de La Hogue. The text was compiled by the Marquis de Condorcet and by the lawyer and writer Jacques-Joseph-Marie Decroix, and was announced for subscription in January 1781. It was printed from 1784 to 1790 in in-8 (70 volumes, each featuring a major engraved illustration) and in-12 (92 volumes), and distributed by the Parisian bookseller Nicolas Ruault, with Maurepas’s tacit permission and the support of Malesherbes. The Société littéraire typographique, which also printed a Collection of the Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and several texts by Beaumarchais himself, was dissolved in 1790.