
          214b

Dezallier d'Argenville, Antoine Joseph (cont.)

bibliographies. Seguier, Bib. Bot., p.341-342, enters 
the following eds. under Le Blond, Alexander:
Paris, 1709, 1722; Amsterdam, 1711; La Haye, 1711,
1716, 1740, and English eds., London, 1712 & 1728.
Then on p.408 Seguier repeats some of them as anonymous. 
Presumably the authorship of this book was
either unknown or in grave doubt in Seguier's time
(1740). The ed. of Paris, J. Mariette, 1722, certainly 
gives the name Le Blond in its title, and it
may have been used earlier. On the other hand, the
so-called 3d ed.. La Haye, J. M. Husson, 1739, has
the initials "L.S.A.J.D.A."

According to Michaud, Dezallier d'Argenville
revised his book in 1747, adding for the first
time a treatise on hydraulics. This and the ed.
of 1760 are called "4. éd., revûe, corrigéé" &c.,
the author being indicated in the title as "M***,
de l'Acadlmie royale des sciences de Montpellier".

Bouchard-Huzard, Bib. sur les constructions
rurales et sur la disposition des jardins, 2me
éd., 1870, p.973, was not consulted in the preparation 
of the foregoing notes, but substantially
confirms our main points. He indicates that the
name Le Blond was used only in the ed. of Paris,
Mariette, 1722, and that this was an error solely
due to the fact that Le Blond had drawn the plates
for the work. This was corrected in the following
ed., and the author's initials again substituted.

We therefore conclude: (1) that the book never
was issued under the author’s own name; (2) that
the original ed. was strictly anonymous; (3) that
the initials "L.S.A.J.D.A." were inserted in the
"Nouv. éd., Paris, 1713; (4) that the name of Le
Blond was substituted for these initials only in
1722 (tho the error was perpetuated in the English
eds. and in many bibliographical records); and (5)
that at a much later period there were authorized
eds. in which the name of the writer was indicated 
by the pen name "M***, de l'Académie royale
[etc.] (MFW)
        