Botanographie Belgique, seconde edition, 4 volumes, illustrated
Lille: Vanackere, 1798-1799. Hardcover. Second edition, seventh year of the French republican calendar (1788 or 1789), after the first of 1781. Three parts in four volumes, complete. Four volumes: xxiii,226; xiv,[2],344; xiv,[2],335,[1]; [2],464,[4] pp. including 25 folding tables (23 illustrated). Half titles. Contemporary tree calf, spines ornamented in gilt, gilt morocco labels. Ink inscriptions on versos of front free endpapers of first two volumes signed by 'G.[?] Vancasteel' to 'Barthélemy Dumortier' at Tournay, 29 August 1811. Contemporary ownership inscription, 'Ex Biblioteca Dumortier Rutteau,' in early leaves of all four volumes. Contemporary manuscript notes in final two pages of second volume. Ex-lib. with modern ink purchase record in rear endpapers at gutter and collector's bookplate on front pastedowns; on one of the last pages of the last volume, Rutteau has written some numbered notes. Bindings worn at corners and more lightly at edges, a bit scuffed, joints tender. Some foxing, particularly in margins of plates, but overall quite clean. A very good set in handsome early 19th-century French bindings. The complete second edition, with all plates and parts, of the best-known work of French botanist Francois-Jospeh Lestiboudois (1759-1815). This set bears fine provenance, owned in the 1800s by Berthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier Rutteau (1797-1878), a prominent Belgian botanist, zoologist, and statesman. Also with bookplates of Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt, the founder of the Hunt Botanical Library in Pittsburgh, one of the finest antiquarian collections of botanical books in the country. Pritzel 5236. Item #H10975
Price: $450.00