Author: BUCHOZ, Pierre Joseph
Title: Histoire universelle du règne végétal
Date: 1772 -1775
Price: GBP £ 27,500
Book Code: 229

Histoire universelle du règne végétal, ou nouveau dictionnaire physique et oeconomique, de toutesles plantes qui croissent sur la surface du globe... Ouvrage orné de 1200 planches gravées en tailledouce, par les meilleurs maîtres, & dessinées d'après nature... Paris, Brunet [and others], [1772-] 1775

[bound with:] Plantes nouvellement découvertes, récemment dénommés et classées, représentées en gravures, avec leurs descriptions...

Paris, Debure, 1779 [-1784]

14 vols bound in six, folio (398 x 253 mm), with 1200 engraved plates, including frontispiece, in the firstwork and 50 engraved plates in the second (plus a duplicate of plate III); some very occasional spotting, a fine copy in contemporary French mottled calf, minor repairs to heads and joints of a few volumes.

First edition of Buchoz's greatest work, a monumental encyclopaedia of plants and the most botanicallysignificant of of his works. The outstanding plates are derived from many sources, and includeengravings from the original drawings in the Collection des vélins in the Muséum d'histoire naturelle in Paris, and in many cases are the first and only published form of these drawings. They include artistssuch as Robert, Aubriet, Bosse, and Mlle Basseporte. The principal engravers were ‘Dupin filius', whosigned 320 plates, and Claude Matthieu Fessard, who signed 109. See Johnston for other artists andinvolved. The Histoire universelle was issued in 25 parts, 13 of text and 12 of plates, over the course of eight years.

The plates were completed but the text was left unfinished. Each plate volume had 100 plates‘numbered I-X in decades numbered 1-10 (with occasional lapses from roman numerals to arabic andvice versa; all botanical except plate I of decade I of the first volume, which is allegorical [i.e. thefrontispiece' (Johnston). The text, comprising plant descriptions arranged alphabetically, ends abruptlyamidst the letter P, with the entry for Pennantia; the plates carried on in alphabetical order, without text, finishing with Xantoxylum aculcatum. In all, 196 plates were issued without text.

This copy has the plates bound in alphabetical order, to correspond with the text; they were issued inrandom order. Inserted in the first volume a detailed collation of the work in a near-contemporaryhand; in addition, there is a 52 page contemporary manuscript index in four sections bound at the endof the fifth volume. It comprises an alphabetical list of the Latin names, an alphabetical list of Frenchplant names and where the corresponding plant is found in the text; an alphabetical list of Latin plantnames and where the corresponding plates are located, and a corresponding index of the French names.

See Johnston, pp 483-7, for a thorough bibliographical analysis of this complicated publication.

Collation of Histoire: [iv] 20 180 [2]; [iv] 198 [8]; [iv] 210; [iv] 214; [iv] 200; [iv] 218; [iv] 198; [iv] 214; [ii, without half-title] 210; [iv] 248; [iv] 228; [iv] 198; [iv] 204, with frontispiece and 1199 engraved plates. Inthis copy, as the plates have been integrated with the text, the separate titles for the plate fascicles have been discarded (they duplicate the wording on the text titles) except for a half-title and title retained to provide a volume title for the final plates issued without text.