Translated by the Author
CAMPE, Joachim Heinrich.
Robinson the Younger … from the German. Hamburg, C. E. Bohn, 1781[–82.]
Two vols in one, 8vo, pp. xxiv, 222, [2, blank]; 264; with a woodcut vignette of a rose stem on each title-page; first title-page slightly foxed, but a very good copy in early speckled calf, spine gilt, red and brown morocco labels; nineteenth-century armorial bookplate of Walther Sterneak.
First edition, rare, of the author’s peculiar translation of his own didactic bestseller Robinson der Jüngere (1779–80).
Campe’s Robinsonade throws his castaway ‘not on a desert island but on a similarly desolate stretch of South American coast. His achievements in his lonely plight are even more striking – and more educational – than those of Defoe’s hero, for he is neither so experienced nor so well equipped (he has no nearby wreck to ransack for supplies) as his English model’ (Morgan, Early Children’s Books and their Illustrations). The Preface expresses Campe’s debt to Rousseau, and hopes that the book will not only entertain, but teach virtue and piety: ‘To use this book therefore only as an exercise in reading for young children, (which generally is not their most agreeable occupation) would greatly frustrate my most sanguine wishes’.
Immensely popular as a didactic text for children, the work saw translations into French (also by Campe himself), Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Greek, Latin, Russian and Italian by the end of the century, as well as a different English translation illustrated by John Bewick (1788), a Frankfurt reprint of the present ‘with German Notes for the Use of those, which are learning the English’ (1789), and an edition in English for Danish students (1795).
ESTC records seven copies only: BL, Cambridge, Senate House; Estonian Academy of Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences; Morgan Library & Museum, and Yale.
ESTC T150075; Gumuchian 4874.