Peter Bichsel   Fine Books

Lavater, Johann Caspar. Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to Prommote the Knowlidge and the Love of Mankind … Illustrated by more than Eight Hundred Engravings Accurately Copied; And Some Duplicates Added from Originals. Executed by, or Under the Direction of, Thomas Holloway. Translated from the French by Henry Hunter. 3 vols. in 5.

With 172 (of 173) engr. plates after Rubens, Fuseli, Chodowiecki a.o. by Holloway, Bartolozzi, Blake a.o, and with c. 360 engravings in the text. Title, (10), 281 pp.; title, pp. V-XII (thus complete), 238 pp.; half title, 2 leaves, pp. 239–444; title, pp. V-XII (thus complete), 252 pp.; half title, 2 leaves, pp. 253–437, 4 leaves index. Royal 4to. 20th-century half vellum with gilt spine labels. – London, John Murray, H. Hunter, and T. Holloway, 1789 (–1798).

First english edition, first issue, of one of the most prominent plate books of the time. “A sumptuous Edition … The translation and engravings were under the superintendence of the celebrated H. Fuseli, at whose solicitation Lavater furnished an entire fresh set of Drawings in quarto, to suit the prevailing taste of the public, it having been originally intended for folio size” (Lowndes). A second issue was edited with Stockdale as publisher, but these copies are inferior to the present first issue which was issued in numbers from 1789 to 1798. The directions to the binder (not bound in in the present copy but enclosed in a xerox copy) mentions 174 plates of which no. 29 is passed over. Thus, of the 173 plates belonging to the work 172 are present, lacking no. 110 “Nine eyes, finished” only which, obviously, never was bound in. – Lowndes 1321; Schulte-Strathaus 77f; Landolt/Weigelt 274.9, 274.11, 274.13; Graesse IV, 126; Brunet III, 887; Garrison/Morton 154. – Some foxing in part of the plates. Otherwise fine. – Best.-Nr. 4659