Oblong 16mo. 112pp. With 16 lithographed plates. Original publisher's decorative green paper boards, lettered in red and black. Lightly rubbed and marked. Near contemporary prize label to FEP, scattered spotting.

A rare atypical Parisian alphabet, preserved in the original publisher’s boards, calculated for the amusement and instruction of young children, commonly attributed to contemporary advertisement catalogues to Hippolyte Vallée (1816-1885), educator and founder, in 1847, of the Vallée Foundation, an institution devoted to child neuropsychiatry and the psychiatric care of adolescents.

The crude illustrations each depict an object or action representing a letter of the alphabet and the text provides a succinct explanation of said object or action; for example, 'C' stands for Chien 'emblème de la fidélité, et qui voue à son maître un attachment tel'. The exception is the letter 'W' which is omitted entirely, unsurprisingly as the letter was not formally incorporated into the French alphabet until the mid-twentieth century; indeed Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie of 1751 stated that the letter should only by employed to match French writing with that of foreigners.

OCLC records copies at just two locations worldwide (BNF and Princeton).