“SOME PREPARATION FOR THE THOUGHT OF DARWIN”: 1781 EDITION OF BUFFON’S NATURAL HISTORY IN THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION, IN HANDSOME CONTEMPORARY TREE CALF, WITH OVER 300 COPPERPLATE ENGRAVINGS

BUFFON, Count de. Natural History, General and Particular, by the Count de Buffon, Translated into English. Illustrated with three hundred and one Copper-plates, and Occasional Notes and Observations by the Translator. London and Edinburgh: Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell; W. Creech, 1781. Eight volumes. Octavo, contemporary full tree calf, raised bands, red and green morocco spine labels.

Early edition of the first English translation of Buffon’s magnum opus, published in the same year as the first edition, translated and annotated by Scottish naturalist William Smellie, illustrated with 301 copperplate engravings, including two folding maps, one folding diagram, and frontispiece portrait of Buffon. In handsome contemporary tree calf bindings.

“Natural history, prior to Buffon, had all the earmarks of an avocation, a hobby. Buffon is the one who raised it to the status of a science” (Mayr, 336). First translated into English in 1781 this work of Buffon provides, for the first time, “a complete survey of natural history in a popular form… in which he outlines a satisfactory account of the history of our globe… His belief in the mutability of species implied clearly some preparation for the thought of Darwin… Buffon was the first to present the universe as one complete whole and to find no phenomenon calling for any but a purely scientific explanation” (PMM 198). For the naturalist, Buffon’s History was “a splendid and well-illustrated account, and was widely used and copied from, [since it] illustrated animals from remote parts of the world” (Knight, 92). Published in the same year as the first edition of this translation; the first edition was issued in nine volumes and did not list the number of copperplates on the title pages. Plate CCXL appears in four states in Volume VII, as indicated in “Directions to the Binder” in Volume VIII. Index in Volume VIII. See Genet-Varcin & Roger 207. See Nissen 160. See Norman 369. Armorial bookplates.

Text and plates generally clean and fine. Expert paper repair to Plate XXXV in Volume IV. Expert restoration to handsome contemporary tree calf. Buffon sets with all plates intact are scarce.