Jean-Jacques Rousseau | La botanique, Paris, 1805

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

La botanique. Paris: Delachaussée and Garnery, 1805

FIRST EDITION, LARGE PAPER COPY, folio (515 x 335mm.), half-title, title-page with stipple-engraved vignette, 65 stipple-engraved plates, printed in colours and finished by hand, by Bouguet, Jacques Chailly, M.lle Delelo, and others, after Redouté, printed by Langlois, contemporary half calf, some foxing, binding slightly rubbed

A beautifully illustrated botanical work with colour printed plates after Redouté: a large-paper copy with the plates in colour. Rousseau's Lettres élémentaires sur la Botanique was published posthumously in his Oeuvres in 1782. His interest in the subject had first been aroused in 1763 or 1764 by his enforced exile amongst the natural beauties of Switzerland. Following the current fashion, he made various collections of plant specimens or herbaria, two of which are known to have been given to Madame Étienne Delessert and her daughter Marguérite-Madeleine, for whom the letters on botany were written. This illustrated edition of the text has always been prized for its plates after Redouté. One great admirer was Ruskin, who in 1878 wrote to his bookseller, F.S. Ellis: "Please at once set your Paris agents to look out for all copies that come up, at any sale, of Rousseau's Botanique with coloured plates, 1805 — and buy all they can get." The work was issued in a variety of forms, with the plates in both black and white, and printed in colours, on regular paper and large paper, the plates with and without letters (the present copy is with letters).

LITERATURE:

Dunthorne 252; Great Flower Books, p. 74; Hunt, Redoutéana 16; Nissen BBI 1688; Stafleu TL2 9688