A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ENIGMA: THE H-1773: 08 EDITION OF RAYNAL’S HISTOIRE DES DEUX INDES

The publication of C.P. Courtney’s Bibliographie des éditions de Guillaume-Thomas Raynal 1747–1843 (2021) marked a new stage in the bibliographical study of this work. This article deals with the counterfeit edition numbered H-1773:08 in the Bibliographie , which was published with the address ‘Amsterdam’ in 1773 and has six volumes. The printing is found to have been a collaboration between the bookseller-printer Jean-Edme Dufour (1728–1789), established in Maastricht, and his colleague Clément Plomteux, in Liège. The discussion focuses on elements concerning the engraved and compound tailpieces and headpieces, the drop caps, and the spelling, types of rods, ampersands, fonts and swashes. The respective typographic styles of Dufour and Plomteux are linked to the places where each carried out his activity, and to their careers. Plomteux’s output in an ecclesiastical principality like Liège was different from that permitted to Dufour by the more modern Protestant regime in Maastricht.