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Frédéric Lepelle, engraver.

Early French printing of the Declaration of Independence, based closely on the famous Stone engraving.

[Paris]: Kaeppelin, [1840]
Engraved broadside, 34½ x 26½ inches, plus 1½-inch binding stub; folds as issued, repairs at intersection of folds, minor offsetting. 

This printing was produced to accompany a French edition of the Jared Sparks biography of George Washington. Sparks was introduced to the translator François Guizot by none other than the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette had been the recipient of two of the original 200 William Stone printings of the Declaration of Independence. One of his Stones was quite possibly the source for this faithful engraved copy--there could not have been many other good facsimiles in France at that time. Not in Bidwell.

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