In my own grubby mitts, I've got the actual copy of Alcoholic Liquors that the PDF file was scanned from. (Having a SO that works in one of Harvard's Libraries has its perks.)

I can even see all the nifty fold-out plates after p. 722 that Google didn't bother to scan!

*Does a little happy dance*

Nice!!

Cool. So now I know of 3 in existence, mine included.

Unfortunately, I have to return it eventually.

Google Books has apparently scanned two different copies of it- the one from Harvard that I have (temporarily) and that the PDF here comes from, and another one from the University of California at Davis. On both of them, they just scanned the nifty plates in the back of the book as they were folded into it- so you can only see the occasional strip of the image. Would unfolding them have been that difficult?

IIRC, the copy that Oxygenee used to make their facsimile was not one of these- so there are at least four copies in existence. Actually, looking at Google Books library finder, there are at least 18 copies held in various libraries- including 2 copies at different Harvard libraries. So there are at least 19 copies kicking around...

My facsimile is scanned from a copy in my own library. As Zman says, the original is a scarce book.

I have a copy of the 1871 McKennie printing at my house right now... unfortunately it's not mine (it belongs another member here).

Any chance you'd be able to scan those plates, Nonmouse? Would that be kosher?

Yea, I was actually planning on doing that. I need to work out a way to get good scans of them without damaging them any more than they already are- the paper's awful fragile, especially along the (140 year-old) creases.

Only if it's blessed by a Rabi.

Better still, any chance we could make them available on the WS Homepage in the historical documents library?

When you say "copy" do you mean an original print/book from 1871, or one of the photocopies of it?

That was my hope. They really are fantastic. You can can see most of them in the Google Books preview of Oxygenee's facsimile edition- though some of them are more impressive in the original 8"x14" (or so) format. (Note- this not meant as a criticism of M. Nathan-Maister's decision to reproduce them at page size, with blow-ups of details; I understand that inserting odd-sized pages into a book is significantly expensive.)

Gimme a few days and I'll have some PDFs of them.

An original. The cover has definitely seen better days but the pages and binding are in good shape.

As a cool side note, one of the previous owners appears to have been a whiskey distiller; just a guess based on notes that are on the margins of some of the pages.

That's cool. I have another copy of Duplais in french from the 1900 edition that had some handwritten notes regarding absinthe in them.

I have full digital versions of the 1855 French edition and the 1871 McKennie English edition, the latter I scanned myself, both include the foldouts. I also scanned the full 1893 DeBrevans English edition, also available as a download.

Helpful little bugger, aren't you?!

That's even cooler... I'm sure it must be pretty amazing to hold and be reading from the same book as a fellow absinthe distiller; someone who was participating in the same practice over 100 years ago that you are doing today.

I'm glad to know that it has found its way into the right hands and is being done proper justice.

Cheers!

One of the sets of Duplais that I have is the 1893 edition, and inside there's numerous scribbles for cognac and notes on absinthe written in the margins... it makes me love these books even more.

Another cool thing is finding objects that were left in the book, either to mark the page or just because. Sometimes you'll find really old pressed flowers, herbs/leaves/seeds, pages stained by drips of spirit, letters, receipts, labels, etc.

I love it.

I dig pressed plants, flowers especially. Any pics lying around?

It's no surprise that those copies are in the right hands.

A couple of corrections: You listed the link to microfilm, this is the link for the monograph

Also, the "library finder" -- Worldcat.org -- is not associated with Google in any way. WorldCat is the world's largest bibliographic database (yeah, I work for the company!) -- 168+ million bibliographic records with over 1.3 billion total library holdings listed (across more than 71k libraries in 86 countries).

It's a great resource for finding books/articles/cds and is completely free to use. Now I know that there's a copy of Duplais a mere 105mi from me.

Yeah, but the microfilm search also pulls up all the hardcopies, so I didn't bother linking to the other one.

I guess I should have phrased that a bit better- I meant that Google Books has a link to WorldCat on their pages for books. I prolly should've said something like "The 'Library Finder' link to WorldCat from Google Books brings up, etc, etc." I was just being lazy. Mea culpa.