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Spectacle de la nature, or Nature display’d, being Discourses on such Particulars of natural History as were thought most proper to excite the Curiosity and form the Minds of Youth, illustrated with Copper Plates … translated from the original French … the eighth [– fourth; – third] Edition, revised [– revis’d] and corrected.

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Scarce ‘eighth edition’ of Pluche’s encyclopaedic discourses on man and nature. ‘Well known by the educated public, the work played an important role in the education of children of wealthy families and was sometimes even used as a textbook of natural science. Le spectacle is explicitly didactic, and for a time Pluche had even thought of calling it “La physique des enfants”. Composed mainly in the form of dialogues between a young nobleman, his parents, and a prior, it is an idealization of Pluche’s activities as tutor to the Stafford family.’ (DSB).

Published in French in eight volumes between 1732 and 1750, the first volume appeared in Humphreys’s English translation in 1733, with new editions and further translations appearing frequently in the following decades, with at times erratic numbering of the editions. The second ‘eighth edition’ (first 1754), the first four present volumes were published in 1757 by a broad consortium of booksellers, before an unknown delay paused printing until 1763, when the project was resumed, with the remaining volumes described as the ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ editions. A seventh volume, on architecture and instructive arts, was published in 1763.

ESTC T131947-T131953 (without T131949, vol. VII).

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