BRUECKMANN, Franz Ernst.
De Cervo Volante et eius Hybernaculo.
Wolfenbüttel, [for the author], 1739
4to, pp. 12, with 1 engraved plate; a large copy in very good condition and bound in contemporary marbled wrappers.
First and only edition of the earliest monograph on the stag beetle. The fine plate shows the insect in all its glory, also his winter quarters in the trunk of an oak tree.
Franz Ernst Brueckmann (1697-1753) was a physician at Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel who was also an avid collector and assembled a fine cabinet containing minerals, fossils, natural history objects, scientific instruments, and curiosities. He travelled widely in the German speaking lands and wrote a number of essays, styled travelling letters (epistola itineraria), on topics he was interested in, some also discussing fellow collectors and their collections. These epistolae were issued separately and privately printed for the author. This is epistola itineraria 78. Brueckmann was a member of the Berlin Academy and the Leopoldian academy at Vienna.
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DAY, Thomas.
The History of Sandford and Merton; a Work intended for the Use of Children …
First edition thus of Thomas Day’s wildly popular story for children, here in ‘a more reduced form’ as ‘the price of the original work may be incommodious to … young readers’. This was was not the same text as the ‘Abridged’ version first published by Wallis and Newbery (and by Darton in 1800). This edition excludes most of the original work’s numerous educational digressions but largely leaves the plot untouched. The ‘Advertisment’ also notes that readers who would prefer the original three volume edition can also acquire it from the present publishers, who had bought up the remaining stock.
[JUVENILE.] DAY, Thomas.
The History of Sandford and Merton, abridged from the Original. Embellished with elegant Plates … Third Edition.
Third edition of Richard Johnson’s abridgement of Day’s most famous and most enduring children’s book (1783, with sequels in 1786 and 1789), first published in this form in 1790. ESTC shows three copies of the first edition; five of the second; and BL and UCLA only of this third; Roscoe adds a copy in the Opie collection at Oxford.