The Birds of Buffon, complete in 18 volumes, illustrated with 114 plates of birds
printed in 1785-1787, bound in elegant original hardcover.
Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Count of. Natural history, general and particular. The Birds.
Deux-Ponts, at Sanson & Company, 1785-1787.
18 volumes in-12. I/ xxxiv pp., (1) f., 256 pp., (1) f., 12 plates out of text including 2 in color; II/ 264 pp., 11 plates out of text; III/ 305 pp., 6 plates out of text including 1 in color; IV/ 299 pp., 8 plates out of text; V/ 372 pp., 7 plates out of text; VI/ 199 pp., 153 pp. of table, 4 plates out of text; VII/ 336 pp. (bound at the time without p. 325), 3 plates out of text; VIII/ 339 pp., li pp. of table, 7 pp. of table, 5 plates out of text; IX/ 377 pp., 5 pp. of table, 6 plates out of text; X/ 246 pp., L pp. of table, 4 pp. of table, 3 plates; XI/ 400 pp., 8 pp. of table, 6 plates; XII/ 391 pp., 6 pp. of table, 4 plates out of text; XIII/ 370 pp., 6 pp. of table, 6 plates out of text; XIV/ 299 pp., xviii pp., 6 pp. of table, 5 plates; XV/ 349 pp., 6 pp. of table, 7 plates out of text; XVI/ 258 pp., 3 pp. of table, 7 plates; XVII/ 385 pp., (3) pp. of table, 10 plates; XVIII/ 110 pp., cxlix pp. of table, (3) pp., 4 plates out of text. Total of 114 plates. Full marbled hardcover of the period.
165 x 98 mm.
Complete collection of the 18 volumes of birds published in this 1785-1787 edition adorned with 114 plates of birds.
This major work of Buffon earned him admiration across the whole of Europe and a celebrity status equal to that of Voltaire and Rousseau.
Buffon conceived the plan for this grand masterpiece when he was appointed Superintendent of the King’s Garden. He collaborated with a number of scientists in this vast encyclopedic enterprise such as Daubenton, Guineau de Montbéliard or Faujas de Saint-Fond.
From the moment the first volumes of 1 The Natural History 7 were published, they met with sensational success. Buffon was called 1 the Pliny and Aristotle of France 7, and he had a statue erected in his honor during his lifetime.
The work rightly appeared as one of the monuments of modern science and the revival of the spirit, alongside 1 the encyclopedia 7, its contemporary.
It put the science of observation in vogue and immediately prompted an intense development in the natural sciences.
1 The Natural History 7 undoubtedly belongs to the Age of Enlightenment. In many respects, Buffon reveals himself to be a forerunner. He illuminates with penetrating insights new avenues where science after him will engage: ecology, ethology, biogeography, paleontology, comparative anatomy, evolutionism. His ideas on Man and the human species, whose uniqueness he asserts, and his insistence on the role of time in the history of the earth and life, make him an astonishingly 1 modern 7 thinker.
Yves Laissus. Ten centuries of enlightenment through books. In French in the text, no. 153.
Precious set of 18 volumes bound in elegant hardcovers of the period.
