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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CLAY, Enid.
The constant mistress ... with engravings by Eric Gill.
No. 174 of a limited edition of 300 copies. Enid Clay was Eric Gill’s sister; he also provided engravings for her Sonnets and Verses (1925). Gill’s collaboration with the Golden Cockerel Press was enormously successful: ‘For a while the Golden Cockerel was Eric Gill’ (Fiona MacCarthy, Eric Gill p. 187). ‘No other wood-engraver of the period comes near to Gill’s originality and verve’ (ODNB).
UNIQUE? [BEWICK, Thomas?]
26 rubbings from engraved woodblocks of the heads of Kings and Queens and England, apparently never published in this form.
26 apparently unrecorded wood-engravings – heads of the monarchs of England from William the Conqueror to George III – these images taken by rubbing from the blocks rather than printing. The engravings bear strong similarity to the 26 which appear in An Abridgement of the History of England … by Dr. Goldsmith … with Heads by Bewick (London, 1803), of which Thomas Bewick apparently bought a copy on 20 April of that year: his account book records a ‘Parcel / Goldsmith Hisy Engd / Grafton Piccy 4s d.’ (A Provisional Checklist of the Library of Thomas Bewick, by David Gardner-Medwin, item 1, online).