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TEACHING THE BLIND
GUILLIÉ, Sébastian. Essai sur l'Instruction des Aveugles, ou exposé analytique des procédés employés pour les instruire.
Paris, Imprimé par les Aveugles, et se vend a leur Bénéfice, a l'Institution, 1817. Small 8vo. With richly engraved allegorical frontispiece by Dubois, showing two blind young people studying at a table, surrounded by instruments of learning and the bust of Sanderson above their heads, and with 21 full-page engraved plates by Dubois and Azelie Hubert after Julie Ribault, 6 showing reading and writing tables and various devices for the instruction of blind children and 15 showing blind boys and girls working at various trades and professions, such as playing piano and harp, knitting, spinning, weaving, plaiting, making wicker baskets, mat-seated chairs, carpets, etc. Original printed wrappers.
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First edition of an essay on the instruction of blind children by the director general of the Royal Institution for Younger Blind in Paris, home of Louis Braille from 1819 on. It is the first professional essay since the treatise published in 1784 by the first director of the Institute, the first school for the blind. It gives a short history of the Institute and its work, discusses the character of blind children and presents short biographies of famous blind scholars and artists through history, including Nicholas Sanderson (b. 1682), depicted in the frontispiece, who even taught Newton's theories on light and colour and became professor of mathematics at Cambridge. After that follow methods and practical devices used to teach blind children to read and write. Braille had not yet been invented, but they used the three dimensional letters of cast printing types. It also covers the teaching of geography, mathematics, music, communication with deaf-mute children, handicrafts, chess and card and other games. A full-page woodcut plate shows how to pierce the playing cards. The book closes with some poetry written by blind.
In good condition, some occasional marginal foxing. Slightly loose in spine.
