Octavo: 8-467, [3] pages, in half sheepskin, a posterior binding. With five folding plates. Before his revolutionary notoriety, Jean-Paul Marat pursued a serious scientific career, publishing on optics, light, and particularly electricity. By the early 1780s he was striving to establish himself within the European scientific community, positioning his work against that of leading experimentalists in Paris and London. Recherches physiques sur l’électricité represents Marat at the height of this intellectual phase, revealing his ambition to challenge existing theories and secure recognition as an original natural philosopher. The book stands today as an important document of his pre-Revolution identity—rigorous, polemical, and steeped in the scientific debates of the Enlightenment. Recherches physiques sur l’électricité is Marat’s most substantial scientific treatise, presenting experimental observations and theoretical arguments on the nature and propagation of electricity.