Rousseau, (Jean Jacques)

Half-title, title-page with uncolored stipple-engraved vignette. Illustration: 65 stipple-engraved plates (numbered 1–53, 62, 55–62, [63], 64–65), printed in colors and finished by hand, by Bouguet, Jacques Chailly, Mlle. Delelo, and others, after Redouté, printed by Langlois.

Royal folio (20 5/8 x 13 1/2 in.; 525 x 342 mm). Binding: Expertly bound to style in half
green straight grained morocco over period red patterned paper-covered boards, flat spine in six compartments, lettered and decorated in gilt, red endpapers, gilt edges. Provenance: Edward Geoffrey Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (armorial bookplate and press-mark "Inner Library Ab.L1.No 2" on verso of flyleaf).



Some foxing to text and plates, mostly marginal, plates 1, 52, 61, 65 particularly affected. Significant wear to lower corner of back board, affecting the extreme corners of plates 49–65 to varying degrees. 

De Belder sale 310; Dunthorne 252; Great Flower Books, p. 134; Hunt, Redoutéana 16; Nissen 1688; Plesch sale 661; Stafleu & Cowan TL2 9688.

Some foxing to text and plates, mostly marginal, plates 1, 52, 61, 65 particularly affected. Significant wear to lower corner of back board, affecting the extreme corners of plates 49–65 to varying degrees.
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First edition of this beautifully illustrated botanical work with color printed plates after Redouté: a large-paper copy with the plates in color.

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 colors, on regular paper and large paper, the plates with and without letters. The present copy is the most deluxe form, i.e., on large paper, with proofs before letters printed in colors.