Beschreibung:

BEUGHEM, Cornelius à (c.1637-c.1710). La France scavante, id est Gallia erudita, critica et experimentalis novissima ... ab anno 1665... ad ann. 1687 [sic! - recte: 1681]. Amsterdam: Abraham Wolfgang, 1683. 12 o (133 x 76 mm). Modern vellum. FIRST EDITION. The third bibliography compiled by the "poly-bibliographer" Cornelius à Beughem, "without doubt the foremost bibliographer of the seventeenth century" (Breslauer & Folter) who between 1680 and 1710 "provided for his contemporaries a series of bibliographies of outstanding usefulness, full, accurate, and intelligently compiled" (Besterman). He was born in Pummerich in Prussia (see Hendreich, Pandectae Brandenburgicae , 1699), though the years of his birth and death are unknown, and spent his life in Emmerich, in the Duchy of Cleves, as a bookseller, and some time city counsellor. The Duchy in 1614 became part of the Electorate of Brandenburg, and as an obedient and faithful subject, Beughem dedicated, in 1685, his Bibliographia historica to Frederick William the Great Elector, and his sons Frederick, the first King of Prussia, and Margrave Ludovic. The above work "may be conveniently described as a bibliography of learned and scientific works published in France between the years 1665 and 1681, both inclusive... On the one hand it is, in effect, merely a bibliographical index to the 'Journal des Scavans.' But on the other hand it is admirably divided into three parts: the first chronological, the second alphabetical by authors, the third classified into six sections" (Besterman). - This appears to be an unrecorded first state of the title ('1687' for 1682). Besterman 2357.