Nicolas Lemery’s Cours de chymie was easily the most successful in the burgeoning field of French chemico-pharmaceutical textbooks in the 17th and early 18th centuries. From the first edition in 1675 until the author’s death in 1715, it went through ten editions. But it didn’t stop there. There were posthumous 11th and even 12th editions. Altogether, the book appeared in 32 different editions or imprints. Lemery’s Cours de chymie is a bibliographical nightmare. There are two each of the second, third, fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth editions, most—but not all—appearing in different years. And identical Lyons imprints often sport four or five different title pages with different imprints. Unraveling this mess will take us to the intersection of chemistry and the regulation of printing under the French absolutist state, and it will answer the question, Would a book lie? Yes, it most certainly would.

When books lie: Unravelling the bibliography of Lemery's Cours de Chimie

2019 Fall National Meeting

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