Hereditas Antikvárium

Fair Partner ✔
12. Könyvárverés

... nunc secundis curis recognitum et auctum. Tom(i) I-III.
Viennae, 1780. Typis Nobilis de Kurzböck. (8)+CLXIV+(12)+660+(4)p.+III folding pl(s)., (4)+822+(2)p., (2)+1086 [recte 1084]+(2)p. With allegorical vignettes on the two-colour printed title pages.
The author is a Lorraine-born linguist. Following his studies in Rome, he left for Poland around 1647, where three different grammar books – French, Italian and Polish – were published two years later. In 1653, he arrived in Istanbul with a Polish diplomatic mission, where - after another two years - he was appointed as head of the Polish royal translation office. His language skills and diplomatic acumen are proved by the fact that he conducted successful negotiations with the highest Turkish dignitaries as a royal agent without an interpreter. When the Polish court did not financially support his language education ideas, he left for Vienna. In 1680, he published his comparative Turkish grammar book here (see the previous lot of our auction) as well as the masterpiece of his life: the Arabic-Persian-Turkish dictionary, which is still an indispensable source of the history of language as it also contains phraseologies and proverbs. The copies of his successful work’s first edition were mostly destroyed during the siege of Vienna in 1683. The task of printing the second edition, edited by Bernhard Freiherr von Jenisch, an Austrian orientalist, with an advance payment of 8,000 guilders paid by Empress Maria Theresa was given to the printing house of Joseph Kurzböck, who - in addition to the 500 folio-sized copies - prepared a “grand papier” (43 cm spine height) version for her (as well as for himself). Our copy is presumably the piece sold by the printer’s widow, the fourth volume of which was probably destroyed during World War II.
Contemporary leather with painted endpapers. Spine richly gilt with embellished A. S. initials in the fields between the ribs.