Berardier - Précis de l’histoire universelle - 1776

BÉRARDIER DE BATAUT, L'ABBÉ FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH. — SUMMARY OF WORLD HISTORY, WITH REFLECTIONS (PARIS, CHARLES-PIERRE BERTON, 1776).
Paris: Charles-Pierre Berton, 1776.
Small octavo. Full contemporary calf, spine with raised bands and gilt ornaments.
New Paris edition revised and corrected published under the reign of Louis XVI by bookseller Charles-Pierre Berton, located on rue Saint-Victor.

Renowned author and respected pedagogue who was notably the professor and patron of Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, the abbé Bérardier de Bataut offers a method of learning history that favors the sequence of causes, the role of great men, and the lessons drawn from the decline of ancient civilizations.

The work places itself in the tradition of Bossuet’s Discours sur l’histoire universelle, while adopting the fluent and methodical style characteristic of Enlightenment pedagogy.

Beautiful copy preserved in its 18th-century full marbled calf binding. Ornately gilt spine with bright guilloches. Original red morocco title piece well preserved. Light wear to the heads and corners, binding firm and splendidly intact. Interior very healthy and clean on era-verge paper. Title well preserved bearing the Rising Sun mark.

The abbé Bérardier de Bataut was not merely a scholar: headmaster of the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris, among his pupils were some of the brightest... the future leaders of the French Revolution! Despite the events of 1789, Robespierre retained fraternal admiration for his former eloquence teacher.