To Benjamin Franklin from Etienne-Alexandre-Jacques Anisson-Duperon, dit Anisson fils, 31 July 1784
From Etienne-Alexandre-Jacques Anisson-Duperon, dit Anisson fils8
L: American Philosophical Society
A Paris le 31 Juillet 1784.
M. Anisson a l’honneur d’assurer de ses devoirs Monsieur Franklin. Il est bien fâché de ne pas s’être trouvé chez lui, lorsque M. son fils lui a fait l’honneur d’y passer de sa part; mais il etoit a faire un voyage dont il est revenu hier au soir. Il aura le plus grand empressement d’offrir à Monsieur franklin l’exemplaire qu’il desire, de son ouvrage auquel il fait peut-être trop d’honneur.9
M. Anisson desirant en conférer avec Monsieur franklin, il le prie de lui faire savoir le jour et l’heure où il pourra avoir l’honneur de le rencontrer chez lui. Il lui portera lui-même un exemplaire pour lequel il fait faire des dessins sur ceux qui servent à la gravure dont il n’a pu encore voir une seule épreuve./1
M. Anisson fils, Directeur de L’Imprimerie Royale demeure Rue des orties du Louvre, au coin de la rue du Doyenné./.
Notation: Anison 31 Juillet 1784
8. Son and designated successor of Jacques Anisson-Duperon, director of the Imprimerie royale (XXVI, 519). Though Etienne-Alexandre-Jacques would not formally become director until his father’s death in 1788, he appears to have acted as co-director beginning in 1783: DBF; Frédéric Barbier et al, eds., Dictionnaire des imprimeurs, libraires et gens du livre à Paris, 1701–1789 (1 vol. to date, Geneva, 2007– ); both under Anisson-Duperron.
9. The work in question was likely a description of Anisson’s new printing press, which Anisson had declined to show BF in November, 1782, before it was finished: XXXVIII, 307–8n. The press was completed by March, 1783, when Anisson presented an illustrated memoir to the Académie des sciences. The academy’s commission approved the invention in May, and in the fall of 1783 the Imprimerie royale issued Description d’une nouvellepresse exécutée pour le service du roi. The pamphlet included a brief description of the press and its advantages, an extract of the commissioners’ report, and an item-by-item comparison of the press’s improved components with their counterparts in the current standard press. In 1785 the academy published the full text of Anisson’s 1783 memoir as a freestanding pamphlet, and in Memoires de mathematique et de physique …, X (1785), 613–50. Entitled Premier mémoire sur l’impression en lettres, suivi de la description d’une nouvelle presse …, it also included essentially everything published in the 1783 Description. If Anisson had page proofs for this pamphlet by July 1784, as is possible, he may have been offering a set to BF.
1. Some copies of the 1783 Description (among them the one held by the Bibliothèque Nationale) featured four plates of watercolor illustrations and a detailed key to the parts of the press they depicted. The 1785 Premier mémoire (both versions) incorporated this key to accompany a set of copperplate engravings corresponding closely to the earlier illustrations. It is evidently to these engravings, not yet completed, that Anisson refers in the present letter. Anisson did visit BF sometime in the next several months (see BF to Anisson, Nov. 10, 1784, Bibliotheque Nationale), but what, if anything, he may have ultimately brought to Passy on that occasion is not known.