Oeuvres complètes

First collected edition, partly first edition, illustrated with a frontispiece portrait by Girodet and 26 plates by Girodet, Desenne, Lafitte, Moreau le Jeune, Prudhon; Vernet and Isabey were even commissioned for the figures of Paul et Virginie. As in almost all copies, the plates have been bound in some disorder, as several sets of engravings bear the same numbering, but the whole is complete.
Half red Russia leather Bradel binding. Smooth spine decorated with fillets. Covers of paper imitating Russia leather. Scattered foxing. Some soiling to some covers but superb set with well-preserved binding.
Contents: Volumes 1 and 2: Voyage à l'isle de France (Mauritius), Voyage en Hollande, Observations sur la Prusse, Observations sur la Russie. Volumes 3 to 7: Etudes de la nature, with Paul et Virginie and La Chaumière indienne in the sixth volume; the seventh volume contains L'arcadie and Fragments de l'Amazone (imaginary account of a journey to the Amazon). Volumes 8 to 10: Harmonies de la nature. Volume 11: Voeux d'un solitaire. Various memoirs. Volume 12: Essai sur la vie de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l'éducation des femmes, Empsael, La pierre d'Abraham, Mémoire sur la ménagerie du jardin des plantes...
Writer, botanist, great traveler in his early life, political thinker, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre achieved fame with his Etudes de la nature and Paul et Virginie, a fable about the fall and misfortunes of virtue, a poetic narrative whose protagonists' deaths establish a new theodicy regarding death and providence. It should be added that the Voyage à L'île de France is undoubtedly one of the journeys not only among the best written but also among the most finely observed. Beyond this, the anecdotes about Rousseau are of the greatest appeal and the essay on the philosopher of great interest; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was not only Jean-Jacques Rousseau's friend but his principal disciple.