Nouvel Alphabet En FrançAis, Divisé Par Syllabes. [Primer.]

16mo, pp.44, likely lacking two final leaves (see below); title printed within woodcut frame with small woodcut ornament, small woodcut tailpieces; some dampstaining and dust-soiling, top- and fore-edges irregularly trimmed; in a contemporary stab-stitched binding reusing an eighteenth-century manuscript on vellum; soiled and cockled; contemporary pentrials throughout; later pencil annotations to 2pp.An unrecorded Orléans-printed devotional primer, including litanies to the Christ Child (with vertically-printed refrains) and the duties of children toward their parents. Such primers, containing the alphabet, two- and three-letter monosyllables, and a series of prayers for Mass, appeared throughout nineteenth-century France. Also present here are the 'devoirs des enfants envers leurs meres & peres', including supporting one's parents in poverty and promptly carrying out their last wishes, and a series of 'Litanies de l'enfance de Jesus-Christ', with the refrains 'Nous vous adorons' and 'Exaucez-nous, enfant Jesus' printed vertically. The Stockholm-born bookseller and publisher Jules-Julien-Gabriel Berthevin (1769–1839) was conservateur du materiel at the French Imprimerie royale under the Bourbon Restoration and seems to have published a few other moral works for children, among them Les De lassemens de l'adolescence (1802) and Alphonse et Dalinde (1797-8). The two final leaves, likely containing a litany to the Virgin Mary, have been carefully torn out by an early owner. We find no other copies on OCLC, Library Hub, or CCfr. Language: French