Charles Estienne (1504 or 1505 - 1564), the third son of Henri Estienne, was, like his brother Robert, a man of considerable learning.
After the usual humanistic training he studied medicine, and took his doctor's degree at Paris. He was for a time tutor to Jean-Antoine de Baïf, the future poet. In 1551, when Robert Estienne left Paris for Geneva, Charles, who had remained a Catholic, took charge of his printing establishment, and in the same year was appointed king's printer. In 1561 he became bankrupt, and he is said to have died in a debtors' prison.
His principal works are:
- Praedium Rusticum (1554), a collection of tracts which he had compiled from ancient writers on various branches of agriculture, and which continued to be a favorite book down to the end of the 17th century
- Dictionarium historicum ad policum (1553), the first French encyclopaedia
- Thesaurus Ciceronianus (1557)
- De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, with well-drawn woodcuts (1548)
He also published a translation of an Italian comedy, Gli Ingannati, under the title of Le Sacrifice (1543; republished as Les Abuse, 1549), which had some influence on the development of French comedy; and Paradoxes (1553), an imitation of the Paradossi of Ortensio Landi .
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