Details
CARL PETER THUNBERG, 1743-1828
Voyages de... Thunberg, au Japon, Par le Cap de Bonne-Espérance, les îles de la Sonde... traduits, rédigés et augmentés de notes considérables... particulièrement sur le Javan et le Malai; Par L.Langles... Et revus, quant à la partie d'Histoire naturelle, per J.B.Lamarck. Paris: Crapelet for Benôit Dandré, Garnery and Obré, 1796. 4 volumes, 8° (19 x 12.4cm.) Half-titles. Engraved portrait frontispiece, one headpiece and 28 plates (7 folding). (Vol.III plate I with slight surface damage at inner margin, plate number of one of the folding plates in vol.IV shaved.) Contemporary red mottled paper over pasteboard, dark green paper lettering-pieces gilt on the flat-backed spines (slight discolouration to spines, light scuffing to extremities.) Provenance: de Borne D'altier (signature on titles, marginal note in vol.I dated 1805); Baron de Chapelain (ink name stamp on vol.I title, armorial stamps on all titles).
First octavo edition in french. A quarto edition was published in the same year. Both are based on the English translation of 1794-1795, which was itself translated from the Swedish original of 1788-1793. Thunberg, through the good offices of the Dutch botanists Jan and Nikolaus Laurens Burman, was invited to accompany a Dutch merchant ship to Japan in order to collect potential garden plants. He spent three years (April 1772- March 1775) at the Cape Colony, where he collected and described more than three thousand plants, of which about a third were new to science. He then sailed via Java to the island of Deshima in Nagasaki harbour. Although he was able to pass for Dutch, thanks to the time spent in South Africa, his opportunities for collecting were severely curtailed by bureaucratic difficulties, however he was the first western scientist to investigate Japan botanically and described twenty-one new genera and several hundred new species. The present work, in addition to the botanical and topographical descriptions, includes "much of great ethnographical interest" (DSB Vol.13, pp.391-392). Brunet V.850; Mendelssohn 4, p.505; Pagès 442. (4)
Voyages de... Thunberg, au Japon, Par le Cap de Bonne-Espérance, les îles de la Sonde... traduits, rédigés et augmentés de notes considérables... particulièrement sur le Javan et le Malai; Par L.Langles... Et revus, quant à la partie d'Histoire naturelle, per J.B.Lamarck. Paris: Crapelet for Benôit Dandré, Garnery and Obré, 1796. 4 volumes, 8° (19 x 12.4cm.) Half-titles. Engraved portrait frontispiece, one headpiece and 28 plates (7 folding). (Vol.III plate I with slight surface damage at inner margin, plate number of one of the folding plates in vol.IV shaved.) Contemporary red mottled paper over pasteboard, dark green paper lettering-pieces gilt on the flat-backed spines (slight discolouration to spines, light scuffing to extremities.) Provenance: de Borne D'altier (signature on titles, marginal note in vol.I dated 1805); Baron de Chapelain (ink name stamp on vol.I title, armorial stamps on all titles).
First octavo edition in french. A quarto edition was published in the same year. Both are based on the English translation of 1794-1795, which was itself translated from the Swedish original of 1788-1793. Thunberg, through the good offices of the Dutch botanists Jan and Nikolaus Laurens Burman, was invited to accompany a Dutch merchant ship to Japan in order to collect potential garden plants. He spent three years (April 1772- March 1775) at the Cape Colony, where he collected and described more than three thousand plants, of which about a third were new to science. He then sailed via Java to the island of Deshima in Nagasaki harbour. Although he was able to pass for Dutch, thanks to the time spent in South Africa, his opportunities for collecting were severely curtailed by bureaucratic difficulties, however he was the first western scientist to investigate Japan botanically and described twenty-one new genera and several hundred new species. The present work, in addition to the botanical and topographical descriptions, includes "much of great ethnographical interest" (DSB Vol.13, pp.391-392). Brunet V.850; Mendelssohn 4, p.505; Pagès 442. (4)