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Art History
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STENOGRAPHY FOR THE MASSES
[Calligraphy] ASTIER, F. J.. Graphodromie ou Ecriture Cursive Applicable à tous les idiomes, à la portée de tous les âges. Paris, 1816.
4to. [22.1 x 14.4 cm], comprised of half-title, engraved plate, and engraved title, viii pp., 128 pp., 12 (mostly) numbered engraved plates, with engraved title, total of 13 plates by Ambroise Tardieu, printed on thick wove paper. Bound in contemporary straight-grained red morocco, covers with wide border roll incorporating hatched overlapping diamonds, inner narrow roll of alternating fleur-de-lys and tulip blossom, smooth spine gold-tooled in compartments with pointillé tools arranged in a cruciform design, edges gilt, signed by P. Fauchet. Presentation copy inscribed to the Minister of the Interior (Vincent-Marie Viénot, comte de Vaublanc, served Sept. 1815-May 1816), signed and dated “Astier, Graphodrome du Roi,” Paris 2 Feb. 1816. Some minor staining on half-title, inconsequential foxing in margins of a handful of leaves, otherwise impeccable. Large-paper copy.
$3,850 Rare first edition and a large-paper dedication copy in a superb Romantic binding of this treatise on a new and democratic form of shorthand, presented by the author to the Minister of the Interior. While superficially resembling the shorthand system of Samuel Taylor, the founder of modern shorthand, which had been adapted to the French language by Théodore-Pierre Bertin in 1792 and widely imitated, Astier's Graphodromie differed in principle, being purely phonetic rather than letter-based. In his method each symbol—which he adopted from the Taylor-Bertin system—represented a sound or syllable rather than a letter, thus rendering it accessible even to the illiterate. In a further attempt at simplification, Astier did away with several consonants, including b, d and g. The text consists of a long introduction and five lessons, which, he states in the sub-title, could be mastered in "less than a month.” Rival shorthand systems are compared in a table serving as frontispiece. Although systems of “speed writing” were known in antiquity, the motive for the present work was two-fold: a residual populist element deriving from the ethos of the Revolution, and the practical demands of processing the amount of “paper work” associated with the Industrial Revolution.
The binder of this special copy, P. Fauchet, is mentioned approvingly by the ever-critical Ramsden (citing Lesné's 1827 poem), p. 85.
Not in NUC; OCLC lists Yale & NYPL.
* Havette, Bibliographie de la Stenographie Française (Paris 1906), p. 4.
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