91 - BAILLY (Jean-Sylvain). Letters on Plato’s Atlantis and on the Ancient History of Asia, as a Sequel to the Letters on the Origin of the Sciences, Addressed to Mr. de Voltaire. London, Elmsly, and Paris, Frères Debure, 1779. 8vo, 2 folios, 444 pp., and 1 plate; marbled sheepskin, plain spine with decoration, title label, cold-stamped border on the covers (contemporary binding).

BAILLY (Jean-Sylvain). Letters on Plato’s Atlantis and on the Ancient History of Asia, as a Sequel to the Letters on the Origin of the Sciences, Addressed to Mr. de Voltaire. London, Elmsly, and Paris, Frères Debure, 1779. 8vo, 2 folios, 444 pp., and 1 plate; marbled sheepskin, plain spine with decoration, title label, cold-stamped border on the covers (contemporary binding). This edition was published the same year as the original, which follows the *Letters on the Origin of the Sciences* published in 1777. Complete with its fold-out map engraved on copper by De la Gardette, placed at the end of the volume. Written before Voltaire’s death, these letters were never sent to him; the work begins with the fourth letter. Caps and corners damaged, a few scuffs; otherwise a good copy. An astronomer and mathematician, Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736–1793) would become the first mayor of Paris during the Revolution. Unlike those who view the story of Atlantis as a philosophical or moral fiction, Bailly believes that this myth has a real historical and geographical basis. "One of the most interesting works by the famous Mayor of Paris. In it, the author attributes the creation of all our arts to an ancient people, originally from the north, who initially inhabited the high plateaus of Eastern Tartary. From this destroyed people, the arts are said to have passed to the Chinese, the Indians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks, etc...." (Caillet, I, 649)