Figure 155

Fournier le jeune’s Types: Didot, Paris

From a copy in the Harvard College Library, Œuvres de Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1671–1741) (scan)

1743

The Œuvres de Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1671–1741), printed at Paris (dated Brussels) in 1743 by Didot (probably François), in three large quarto volumes, is in its massive qualities almost a seventeenth century edition, but it has an element of taste about it that the seventeenth century did not afford. Printed entirely in a large size of masculine and nervous old style roman type, splendidly placed on ample quarto pages, and really adorned with decorations by Cochin of a delightful suavity of design, it is a superb book. The italic employed for occasional verse is an interesting font. The volumes were printed from type made by Fournier le jeune, who is here styled Simon Pierre.

See chapter 14