Beschreibung
First edition. Two volumes. London: Printed at the Expence of the Author: and Sold by W. Innys and R. Manby, by Mr. Hauksbee and by the Author at Mr. Bacon's; 1731-1743-1747. Folio (20 3/8" x 14 3/8", 518mm x 366mm). [Full collation available.] With 220 hand-colored etched-engraved plates and a double-page hand-colored etched-engraved map. Bound in contemporary diced calf. On the covers, a fantastical gilt border with serpents and bees, boars and birds, blossoms and snails. On the spine, seven raised bands. Panels gilt. Title gilt to green morocco in the second panel, number gilt to green morocco in the third. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. Presented in red cloth clam-shell boxes with black morocco spine-labels gilt. Joints split with some little losses. Head- and tail-pieces perished, with the headband of vol. II only. A partially-closed gouge to the front board of vol. I. Fore-corners worn. Internally, mild foxing throughout, and some offsetting from the plates. Engraved armorial bookplate of Fane William Sharpe, "Student of Ch(rist) Ch(urch, Oxford)" to the front paste-down of each volume, with (his?) shelfmark in early ink manuscript above. A totally unsophisticated set from the collection of Clarence Dillon. Mark Catesby (1683-1749) was a pioneering naturalist who drew no boundaries around his interests. An inheritance from his father allowed him to cross the Atlantic to Virginia in 1712, and to make return journeys that brought him along the Atlantic coastline and to the Bahamas. He sent specimens back to Sir Hans Sloane, and meanwhile described and drew what he had seen in the unspoiled and unsettled southern part of the American Atlantic. Returning for good to England in 1726, and with the encouragement of Sloane and other members of the Royal Society -- to which Catesby was belatedly elected in 1733 -- spent the next two decades bringing his monumental and comprehensive account to completion. The text, in English and French, allowed the work to reach the widest possible audience in Europe. Although some are by others (notably Georg Ehret), the great majority of the plates were drawn and engraved by Catesby himself. He writes in the preface that he believes the illustration to surpass the description in importance, and it is those illustrations that made the Natural History popular enough to go into two further eighteenth-century editions as well as continental piracies. Catesby's style might seem naïve, but they considerably surpass the stiff -- heraldic, even -- illustrations -- especially of birds -- that had come before. His juxtaposition of fauna against flora, bringing a sense of landscape as well as behavior, was groundbreaking, and of great influence on his successors, especially Audubon. Fane William Sharpe (d. 1711) was Member of Parliament for Callington (Cornwall) 1756-1771. His father John, whose seat he took in 1756, was an agent in the West Indies; perhaps this is the source of the younger man's interest in the flora and fauna of this part of the Atlantic. The volumes come from the estate of Clarence Dillon, the Polish-born American titan of finance (he outbid J.P. Morgan for Dodge, and merged it with Chrysler). Dillon was a Francophile, whose name lives on in Domaine Clarence Dillon, which includes Château Haut Brion. His estate in Far Hills, Dunwalke, was sold by Princeton University in 2001. Dunthorne 72, Ellis/Mengel 476, Fine Bird Books 65, Great Flower Books 53, Hunt 486, Nissen BBI 336 and IVB 177. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 6JLR0159
Verkäufer kontaktieren
Diesen Artikel melden
