ABC, ou Jeu des lettres des enfans des deux sexes de la République françoise. Présenté à la Convention Nationale & aux autorités constituées, par le citoyen Fresneau, instituteur d'une maison d'éducation de jeunes personnes. Paris: chez l’Auteur, et chez la Veuve Hérissant [Marie-Nicole Estienne], l’an II [1793-94].
8vo (211 x 130 mm). Collation: pi2 A-C4. 4, 48 pages. Two title leaves, the earlier one, from 1788, on A1r. Text in double thick and thin rule borders; repeated woodcut and typographic fleur-de-lis ornaments decorating the letter and syllable tables (pp. 6-17). Occasional very small narrow stain at upper edges, else a fine copy, untrimmed, bound in 20th-century buckram, spine title gilt lettered, preserving the original plain blue wrappers with printed waste liners (upper wrapper frayed and with a corner torn). ***
Only known copy? of a reading manual for children, by a pedagogue who had taught younger children before the Revolution. This is a unique revolutionary reissue, intended for “young people of the less fortuned classes,” of a text originally formulated for the most upper of upper classes, aristocratic young ladies of Paris and Versailles.
The booklet opens with printers’-case-like tables of individual letters of the alphabet (capitals in roman type, and upper and lower cases in roman and italic type), followed by ten pages of syllables. The latter contain multiple impressions of typographic fleurs-de-lis. A smaller version of the syllabary and pronunciation charts follow. Brief summaries of accents and long and short syllables for poetry, Roman and Arabic numerals, and an overview of grammar, including verb declensions, conclude Fresneau’s ABC. It is handsomely printed in types by Pierre-Simon Fournier.
Fresneau was running a school for girls, the ”Musée des jeunes demoiselles” in Paris, when life began turning upside down in 1789; he had previously taught at the Académie des Enfants in Versailles, a select pensionnat for younger children, founded in 1753 by the progressive educator Nicolas-Antoine Viard. Of the handful of pedagogical books written by Fresneau for children, very few survive. A catalogue of eight of these works, with prices, appears on the verso of the 1788 title-page, which reads: ABC ou Jeu des lettres, du musée des jeunes demoiselles; contenant les premiers tableaux élémentaires de la méthode de l'instituteur de ce musée; sous la protection de l'Auguste princesse Mademoiselle, Paris: chez Fresneau & Veuve Hérissant, 1788.
The two prefatory leaves were added in Year 2, which spanned the bloodiest months of the Revolution. Presenting his method to the Convention nationale and the constitutional authorities, the author a trifle desperately attempts to re-orient to the new political world his dangerously fleurs-de-lis-filled work, previously dedicated to a princess and sported a royal vignette on its 1788 title (amazingly not removed). He states that as he cannot contribute financially to the Revolution, he hereby wishes to offer up to it this “Elementary Method of French Reading and Grammar,” which he promises to teach to poor children in regular classes, “pour en étendre l’usage en faveur de jeunes personnes de la class infortunée, dont les parens auront bien mérité de la Patrie” (”to expand their use to young people of the less fortunate classes, whose parents performed with heroism during the Revolution” [during the French Revolution, the phrase “bien mérité de la Patrie” had become a formula used for an award discerned by the National Convention to deserving citizens — Wikipedia.]) This seems to imply that those children whose parents declined to participate in the patriotic gore were to be ostracized and punished for the sins of their fathers. Fresneau was struggling here, perhaps to distract attention from all those darn fleurs-de-lis, not a good look for the days of the Terror. His fate appears unknown.
I locate no other copies of either the original 1788 edition or of this reissue. Earlier versions of this text appeared in 1772 and 1783, as part of longer editions; and a 16-page edition with a similar title, printed in 1787, is recorded in one copy, at the Université de Montréal. Three copies in Paris libraries, apparently with varying contents, are recorded of a collection of Fresneau’s printed and manuscript works, with the general engraved title Collection des élements de l'education de l'Académie des Enfants à Versailles (BnF Tolbiac and Arsenal, and Institut National de la Recherche Pédagogique). In the US the only holding of any of Fresneau’s works is the 1772 ABC, at the Morgan Library.
Cf. Gumuchian 129; cf. Huguet (Françoise), Les Livres pour l’Enfance et la Jeunesse de Gutenberg à Guizot. Les collections de la Bibliothèque de l'Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique (1997) no. 416; Huguet, “Les pensions et institutions privées secondaires... (1700-1940),” Histoire de l’Education, no. 90 (2001): 205–21 (p. 213). Item #4495
Price: $3,800.00