Details

Condition

£486.00

Back Add to basket

Images

Description

The French edition (text in French) with the publisher's label pasted to the title page. 2 volumes (complete text & plates) Pp. [12], 663 + typescript on thick paper titled "Index to genera" bound in at the rear. The plate volume includes 104 chromolithographed plates numbered 1-100 but with additional plates 55B, 55C, 56B & 56C. The standard of printing of the plates is outstanding many heightened with metalic inks. Bound in later plain faux-leather blue cloth, without titling. Very good with minimal wear. Contents clean and tight. A very good set of volume X covering the Bombyces and the hawkmoths. [Bibliographic note: the general title page is dated 1908, the title page for Vol. X is undated but the first part of the text is dated 1911and the last part of the text is dated 1930. The German and English editions of vol. X were completed in 1933 with around 900 pages, so perhaps the last few years were not translated into French, but this copy has its full complement of 104 plates. This work is renowned for its outstanding colour plates, some of which required printing from up to 14 different colour blocks (including metallic inks), resulting in a quality of colour printing so excellent that it has remained unsurpassed. But this meticulous chromolithographic printing was incredibly expensive and labour intensive. The project was hugely ambitious - to cover every known species of the World's Macrolepidoptera, but it was plagued by setbacks including two world wars and was never finished; after almost 50 years the project finally came to an end in 1954. The most important collections of butterflies and moths were consulted including those of L. W. Rothschild of Tring, the British Museum, the Paris Natural History Museum, and so on. Comparatively recently, having been out of print for over half a century, a number of original sets were discovered in the printer's warehouse and these have been marketed with a hefty price tag.]

Other books that may interest you