VOYAGE DE MONSIEUR LE VAILLANT DANS L'INTÉRIEUR DE L'AFRIQUE,

Uniformly bound with: SECOND VOYAGE DANS L' INTÉRIEUR DE L' AFRIQUE, PAR LE CAP DE BONNE-ÉSPERANCE, DANS LES ANNÉES 1783, 84 ET 85; Par F. Le Vaillant.

Five volumes: 274, 287, 191, 264 & 327 pages,  34 engraved plates - some folding, recently rebound in quarter red Morocco with matching marbled paper sides, marbled endpapers, titled gilt on the spines, light staining on a few plates otherwise contents bright, a very good set.

Volumes 1 & 2 published A Bruxelles, Chez Benoit le Francq, 1791. Volumes 3 to 5, 1797.

Ogilvy (J.H.) A Bibliography of the Le Vaillant's Voyages and Oiseaux de'Afrique, 1962: numbers 8 and 39. The binder misnumbered the volumes out of order on the spines 4, 5, 3.

Both of Le Vaillant's journeys were immediate sensations in Europe combining natural history, exploration and romantic descriptions of the communities he encountered and were soon reprinted across Europe and were translated into English, Dutch, Italian and German. Brussels was at this time a major centre for pirate publishing, operating largely outside the reach of French royal and later Napoleonic copyright rules. Belgian and Dutch publishers produced cheaper reprints of popular French books for the continental market. Several Brussels editions of Le Vaillant appeared.  B. Le Francq was a respectable Brussels publisher and bookseller , not a mere fly-by-night pirate reprinter and his editions of Le Vaillant are generally well regarded for their typography and their copper plate engravings. The text in the Brussels editions is generally faithful to the Paris originals, though some editions introduced minor editorial changes or abridgements. This edition features the plate of the Hottentot woman in volume 2 of the First Voyage often referred to as the The Suppressed Plate  'La Hottentote'. It depicts a Khoikhoi woman shown in a state of undress and was accompanied in the text by Le Vaillant's extended discussion of what he called the "tablier" or "natural apron" — a term used for the elongated labia minora characteristic of some Khoikhoi women, which had become an object of intense and prurient European curiosity. Le Vaillant's celebrated romance with Narina, a young Gonaqua woman, is narrated with considerable warmth and romance. His portrayal of their flirtation influenced early South African novels.