Merian and Rabel | Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam... Paris, 1771, red morocco, La Vallière copy

Maria Sibylla Merian and Daniel Rabel

Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe, contenant leurs descriptions, leurs figures, leurs differents metamorphoses... Troisieme edition, revue, corrigée, & considérablement augumenté par M. Buc'hoz. Paris: L. C. Desnos, 1771

3 volumes in 1, folio (506 x 332mm.), 325 HAND-COLOURED ENGRAVED PLATES on 188 sheets (the 256 plates in the first and second volumes after Merian by J. Mulder, P. Sluyter, and D. Stopendaal; the 69 plates in the third volume after Rabel), CONTEMPORARY RED MOROCCO GILT, plausibly by Derome, spine gilt in compartments, edges gilt, first plate shaved at fore-edge, tissue repair to volume 2, plate 16, tear to lower margin, volume 2, pp.57-58 (not affecting text), minor tears to gutter in volume 3

This rare combined edition gathers Merian's two major works, together with Rabel's depiction of the most spectacular flowering plants of the seventeenth century. The plates to Merian's works (including the additional plates for Insectes de Surinam by her daughter) appear to have been purchased at auction by Desnos, to which he added the suite of plates by Rabel, which is effectively a fourth, revised edition of his classic Theatrum florae. This last part includes all 69 plates that were present in the first three editions of Rabel's work.

LITERATURE:

 Dunthorne 205; cf. Nissen BBI 1341 (volume 1 only) and 1342 (volume 2)

PROVENANCE:

Duc de La Vallière, sale, Paris, Guillaume de Bure, 1783, lot 1656, 450 francs (according to contemporary manuscript note on flyleaf); William Bree (1822-1917), Rector of Allesley, armorial bookplate; [from the library of W.W. Saunders?, pencil note on flyleaf]