DUBOIS DE MONTPEREUX, Frédéric (1798-1850). Voyage autour du Caucase, chez les Tcherkesses et les Abkhases, en Colchide, en Géorgie, en Arménie et en Crimée. Paris: Chez Gide Libraire-Editeur and Neuchatel: Chez l’Auteur, 1839-1843.
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DUBOIS DE MONTPEREUX, Frédéric (1798-1850). Voyage autour du Caucase, chez les Tcherkesses et les Abkhases, en Colchide, en Géorgie, en Arménie et en Crimée. Paris: Chez Gide Libraire-Editeur and Neuchatel: Chez l’Auteur, 1839-1843.

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DUBOIS DE MONTPEREUX, Frédéric (1798-1850). Voyage autour du Caucase, chez les Tcherkesses et les Abkhases, en Colchide, en Géorgie, en Arménie et en Crimée. Paris: Chez Gide Libraire-Editeur and Neuchatel: Chez l’Auteur, 1839-1843.

First edition. The Leuchtenberg copy, in a deluxe contemporary binding and extra-illustrated with an additional plate. According to ABPC/RBH, this is the first complete set of the text and accompanying atlases ever to appear at auction. Dubois’s voyage of 1831-1834, supported by the Russian government, allowed him to document an abundance of important ethnographic, historical, archaeological, and natural historical information on the Caucasus. For his important work, he received the prize of the Société de Géographie de Paris, and from Tsar Nicholas I an induction into the Order of Saint Stanislas and 20,000 roubles.

‘This important work with its splendid plates in fact is so far-ranging in subject that it forms a sort of encyclopaedia of the Caucasus. It also includes a section on the archaeology of Georgia, as well as that of the Crimea, especially of Kertch, otherwise known as the Cimmerian Bosphorus. The antiquities of the area had attracted Russian interest from as early as 1825 and a museum was established in Kertch in 1832. Montpereux's book precedes that of Ashik, whose work on the antiquities of Kertch was not published until 1848’ (Atabey). Maximilian, 3rd Duke of Leuchtenberg (1817-1852) married Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, daughter of Nicholas I, in 1839. Atabey 366; Brunet II, 848. Not in Blackmer.

Together 11 volumes, comprising 6 text volumes, octavo (200 x 125mm) and 5 atlas volumes, folio (510 x 375mm). Text: 5 folding tables and one folding map. Atlases: one lithographic general title and one further title in each volume, engraved dedication to Tsar Nicholas I, 197 lithographic plates of which 10 double-paged (variable spotting, a few marginal tears not affecting text, repaired tear in map in text volume VI). Contemporary dark green crushed morocco gilt, closely matching but not quite uniform, white moiré endpapers (endpapers in atlas volumes remargined, very lightly rubbed). Provenance: Maximilian de Beauharnais, 3rd Duke of Leuchtenberg (1817-1852; bookplate).

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