MOUSSAUD (Abbot Jean-Marie). The reasoned Alphabet, or explanation of the figure of the letters. By M. l'Abbé Moussaud, Professor emeritus at the college of La Rochelle, and Member of the Academy of Belles-Lettres of the same city. Work decorated with wooden figures, with more than fifty old, foreign, or newly invented characters, engraved on steel, and a plate in intaglio containing the collection of some and others. From the printing of Crapelet. At Maradan, Bookseller, rue Pavée S. André-des-Arcs. Paris. Year XI - 1803. 2 volumes in one large in-8 (20,3 x 13,3 cm). XXXII, 405, (1) / (4), (419), (1) pp, 1 folded engraved plate : full marbled calf, smooth spine decorated, green calf title page, gilt border on the boards. (Binding of the period). Unique edition, dedicated to Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld. Praise and methodical and thorough study of the characters of the alphabet; "such a beautiful and sublime invention". The author Jean-Marie Moussaud (1742-1824), in his preface, relates that "forced by circumstances to go and live in a foreign country", he took the time to discover that "the shape of our alphabetical characters was not the work of chance, as one usually imagines, but the fruit of reflection, which had artistically combined the features." This discovery made him conceive of explaining the entire alphabet. Articles on the perfection of the alphabet, Explanation of vowels, Distinctive characteristics of vowels and consonants, Explanation of labials, linguals, sibilants, chuintantes, gutturales, in the first volume. Explanation of vowels and consonants polygrams, Reflections on the alphabet in general, on some letters in particular, and on various points of grammar, literature and history, relating to letters, "Writing, by becoming alphabetic, has not ceased to be symbolic", in the second. The editor explains, in his notice, that the characters melted for the work "not having the exact regularity wanted, the whole was again engraved in intaglio", on the folded plate placed at the end of the first volume, comprising the letters and particular characters and five illustrations with the pages to which they correspond. No Z, similar to the S, this one "being only a shapeless sketch of its model but whose hissing is more delicate and softer". A "table of contents" of 31 pages, is more like a very precise explanatory index. From the letter A to Zopirion, grammarian, followed by the ampersand, &, which the author admires a lot "by the elegance and the pleasure of its form" and whose first study gave rise to his reflexion for the letters of the alphabet. Exciting and unusual work. Well preserved with some spotting on the boards.