Une lettre inédite de Nicolas-Antoine Boullanger à Joseph-Nicolas Delisle (1753)

Marie-Thérèse Inguenaud : An unpublished letter from Nicolas-Antoine Boullanger to Joseph-Nicolas Delisle. In 1752, just as Nicolas-Antoine Boullanger was finishing the engraving of his Nouvelle Mappemonde, for which he lacked documents enabling him to trace the coast of North America, the geographer Philippe Buache published a map, together with an explanatory note by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, concerning "new discoveries in the North of die South Seas". This joint publication answered the questions which Boullanger, who admitted to only being a makeshift geographer, had been unable to answer. He was brave enough to write to Delisle to ask permission to use his work ; his letter, dated 8th January 1753, is to be found in the library of the Paris Observatoire (shelfmark B1-7).