Dessaint

First edition of the illustrated French translation, with 2 plates outside the text, one of which folding.

Bindings in contemporary full mottled fawn calf, smooth spines richly gilt with panelled compartments, joints split and restored, some rubbing and small wormholes to the spines, marbled paper endleaves and pastedowns, gilt fillet to the board edges, marbled edges, two rather clumsy restorations to two corners; bindings of the period.

Pleasing internal condition.

This is an abridged translation (but, unusually, explicitly stated as such) of the major work Reise durch Sibirien, published in Göttingen in 1751–1752, comprising 4 quarto volumes and an abundant iconography.

The text constitutes an account of a major scientific expedition to Siberia, which lasted from July 1733 to February 1743.

Johann Georg Gmelin (1709–1755) held the chair of chemistry and natural history at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Provenance: copy from the library of Jean-Marie Le Hénaff, of Morlaix, with manuscript ex-libris on the title pages. Modern ex-libris pasted onto the pastedowns, with the name discreetly erased.

First edition.
Contemporary full marbled and polished brown calf binding. Spine richly gilt in compartments with raised bands, gilt roll tooling at head- and tailbands. Red morocco title labels, tan morocco volume labels. Headcaps of volumes I and V worn; headcap of volume VI torn off. Upper joint of volume I split at foot. Fourteen corners rubbed. Occasional minor foxing, heavier browning to endpapers and half-titles.

First edition, illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of the author in the first volume, 6 maps and plans, and 70 engraved portraits hors-texte, including 65 depicting the Grand Masters of the Order of Malta. (cf. Brunet, V, 1149. Cohen 1011. Saffroy 5420.)

Some restorations to the joints, early marginal annotations at the bottom of pages, library stamp on all three volumes, the third of which is bound slightly differently with regard to the gilt tooling; a loss on the endpaper of the first volume, which has been partially cut out.

A good copy.

The illustrations are distributed as follows:

Volume 1: 1 frontispiece, 3 folding maps, and 26 full-page portraits.

Volume 2: 1 plan and 20 full-page portraits.

Volume 3: 2 folding maps and 5 full-page portraits.

Volume 4: 19 full-page portraits.

Contemporary full speckled tan calf bindings, spines with five raised bands, richly gilt in double-panel compartments, gilt fillets along the board edges, marbled endpapers and pastedowns.

A writer, historian, and member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Abbé de Vertot (1655–1735) authored several notable works, including Révolutions romaines (1719). Dedicated to the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Dom Antoine Manoel de Vilhena, the Histoire des chevaliers hospitaliers offers a chronological account of key events from the Order’s founding in Jerusalem in 1099. The final section includes a Dissertation on the Government of the Order of Malta, the Old and New Statutes of the Order, and an Alphabetical List of the Knight Brothers from the Langues of Provence, Auvergne, and France, as well as the Grand Priories of Aquitaine and Champagne.