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Auction #114 begins on 11 Apr 2024

Large paper MALESHERBES critique of Buffon 1798

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Offered for sale by Adam Langlands of 'Shadowrock Rare Books' - for more information please contact him via email at [email protected]

Chrétien-Guillaume Lamoignon de MALESHERBES (1721-1794). Observations de Lamoignon-Malesherbes sur l'Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière de Buffon et Daubenton. [Edited by Louis Paul Abeille]. Paris: Charles Pougens, 1798. 2 volumes bound in one, large quarto (9 3/8 x 7 1/8ins; 238 x 181mm). Vol.II:  2 p.l., 320 pp; Vol. I: 2 p.l., xcii, 270 pp. Engraved portrait frontispiece of the author by C.E. Gaucher. Condition of contents: vol. II bound at front in error. Contemporary marbled sheep, flat spine with green leather lettering-piece tooled and lettered in gilt. Condition of binding: scuffed, some damage, loss to lettering-piece. Provenance: Alexis and Elizabeth du Pont (Rencourt, Wilmington, Delaware, armorial bookplate). irst edition, quarto, one of only a few large-paper copies, with a distinguished American provenance: the ‘Du Pont Copy’. In this work ‘the amiable and unfortunate’ Malherbes offers a highly effective defense of many of the positions that his friend Buffon had attacked (including the Linnaean system of classification).  “Among Malesherbes’s earliest works, although published posthumously (1798), was a critique of the first volumes of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle (1749). Here he not only disagreed with specific details but also replied effectively to Buffon‘s attack on naturalists who emphasized the accumulation of data and on botanists who believed it possible to discover a natural system of classification.” (D.S.B., IX, pp. 53-54). “Dr. Alexis Irénée du Pont (1843-1904) was a businessman and non-practicing physician who resided in both Louisville, Kentucky, and Wilmington, Delaware. He was a grandson of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours (1771-1834), the eponymous founder of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company in Wilmington, Delaware” (Alexis Irénée du Pont family papers. Accession 2618. Manuscripts and Archives Department, Hagley Museum and Library). 

  • Sold By: Shadowrock Rare Books
  • Contact Person: Adam Langlands
  • Country: United States
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Telephone: 001-860-248-1547
  • Preferred Payment Methods: Paypal, US$ checks and wire transfers, major credit cards through paypal
  • Trade Associations: AA Approved


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