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Catalogue
72
Books
from the Past
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17. BONER, CHARLES. Transylvania; Its Products and its People.
London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer. 1865. $1,000
Thick 8vo; pp. xiv, 642; 10 plates with 12 engravings, 5 folding
maps, and numerous woodcut illustrations in the text; contemporary
half-calf and marbled paper over boards; binding worn; bookplate
of Sir George Stephen; very faint, unobtrusive remains of stamp
at upper corner of title-page; tiny hole in margin of one leaf (no
affect to text); text, plates and maps very clean.
Not in Cox. The author (1815-1870) was a British poet and author
who spent most of his life in Germany, mainly in Ratisbon and Munich.
His travels into Transylvania (Romania) fascinated him, and this
book served as a reference for Bram Stoker's "Dracula",
as mentioned in Stoker's working papers at the Rosenbach Library.
Boner was an cultured, erudite man who moved in literary and artistic
circles, and corresponded with Charles Darwin, to whom he sent a
copy of this work (vide Darwin's "Correspondence" at Cambridge).
An interesting description of travel, social life, customs, politics
and economics of this area, and particularly informative on the
Saxon and Hungarian communities. Sir George Stephen, bart. was born
in Scotfield in 1829 and came to Canada in 1850. In 1876 he became
president of the Bank of Montreal, in 1878 of the Manitoba and Minneapolis
Railway, and in 1881 of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He was created
a baronet in 1886 for his services in connection with the construction
of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
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18.
BONESI, B[ENEDETTO] (1745?-1824). Traité de la Mesure,
ou de la Division du Tems dans la Musique et dans la Poésie.
Dédié a S.A.S. Madame la Princesse de Bénévent.
Par. B. Bonesi. A Paris, Chez l'Auteur, rue de la Lune, n. 20. Chez
H.J. Godefroy, Directeur de l'Imprimerie musicale, rue Neuve des
Petits-Champs, no. 4. Chez Defresle, Libraire, Clôitre St-Honoré,
no. 15, 1806. $900
8vo; pp. [6], ix, [1], 264, 3 (Publisher's note). Printed music;
some lyrics in Greek, Latin, Italian, French and English. Original
blue marbled paper wrappers, worn; remains of printed paper label
on spine; spine worn and front wrapper loose; edges uncut and most
leaves unopened; occasional spotting in upper margins. A scarce
work.
Copies located at: BL; Univ. of Rochester; Newberry Library. In
this treatise on metre and rhythm, the Italian composer Bonesi finds
a correlation between music and poetry, and provides ample illustrations
of both to illustrate his observations. The publisher's note is
interesting in that it extols the "innovation" of printing
music with moveable type, as opposed to expensive engraving, which
because of the complexity of music notation was still used by music
publishers up to the late 18th century. The German press Breitkopf
developed a system of printing music with moveable type that became
the standard in the 19th century.
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A Very Scarce, and Possibly Pirated, Edition
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19. BONNET, C[HARLES], 1720-1793. Contemplation de la Nature,
par C. Bonnet, … . A Amsterdam, Chez Marc-Michel Rey, 1766.
Two volumes. $500
12mo; pp. xcvi, 366; viii, 325. With half-titles; lengthy preface
dated "A Thorex, près de Geneve, le 22 de Juin 1764."
Contemporary full calf, worn; spine ornately gilt in compartments,
lacking a few pieces at head and heel; light offsetting on first
leaves. Pages xvii (v. 1); 129 and 260 (v, 2) erroneously numbered
xvi, 126 and 360 respectively. A good copy of a scarce edition.
National Library of Switzerland 16262; BM 728 (without collation).
Charles Bonnet was born in Switzerland, and spent nearly all of
his life studying nature. He was honoured at an early age for his
work on aphids, and later on the respiratory development of insects.
Bonnet suffered from a visual impairment which hampered his scientific
work, and he turned towards the study of philosophy, psychology
and metaphysics. In Contemplation de la nature, Bonnet theorizes
that all forms of life fall into four classes which can be measured
on a scale from lowest to highest. One of his most popular works,
it was translated into Italian, English, Dutch and German. This
scarce, variant edition, possibly pirated from the first edition
of 1764, was published between the first edition and the so-called
second edition of 1769 and is exceedingly scarce. Printer Marc-Michel
Rey (1720-1780) was born in Geneva but moved to Amsterdam in 1744,
where he published many Enlightenment authors, most notably Jean-Jacques
Rousseau.
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20.
BOREL, PIERRE. Tresor de Recherches et Antiquitez Gauloises
et Françoises, reduites en Ordre Alphabetique. Et enrichies
de beaucoup d'Origines, Epitaphes, & autres choses rares &
curieuses, comme aussi de beaucoup de mots de la Thyroise ou Theuthfranque.
Paris, Augustin Courbé, 1655. First edition. $1,950
4to; pp. [104], 611, [23] (pp. 73-74 omitted in the pagination);
contemporary full vellum, leather ties gone; front endpaper little
crumpled; contemporary name across head of title-page (Carolus van
Rosch of the Soc. Jésus); text lightly toned; faint waterstain
at lower corner of final three leaves; a very good copy.
Brunet I: 1112 "Cet ouvrage est peu commun"; Graesse I,
p. 495; Wellcome II: 204; DSB II, p. 305: "a collection of
linguisitic antiquities listed in alphabetical order (1655) was
the basis for Favre's greatly enlarged Dictionnaire du vieux François,
published in 1882". The author (c.1620-1671) was born at Castres,
studied medicine at Montpellier, and began practising medicine at
Castres in 1641, where he remained for twelve years. In 1654 he
was appointed physician to Louis XIV after the latter's coronation
as king of France. He spent his life pursuing the study of natural
history, chemistry, optics, astronomy, antiquities, philology and
bibliography and was an ardent collector of rare plants, antiquities
and minerals of his region, which he installed in a museum devoted
to his collections. A very good copy of a scarce work.
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21.
BOUGAINVILLE, LEWIS de. [LOUIS-ANTOINE, comte de]. A Voyage
round the World. Performed by Order of His Most Christian Majesty,
In the Years 1766, 1767, 1768, and 1769. Translated from the French
By John Reinhold Forster, F.A.S. London, Printed for J. Nourse,...
and T. Davies..., 1772. First edition in English. $8,250
4to; pp. xxviii, 476; 5 engraved folding maps; 1 engraved folding
plate; later half-calf and paper over boards; marbled endpapers
and fore-edges; eighteenth-century notation at head of title: "John
Campbell given by his brother Robert"; text lightly age-toned
throughout; few spots of foxing; small holes in margins of [R3)
and [Dd3] (paper flaws) not affecting text; text-block cracked at
initial and final leaves but very tight and secure.
Hill, p. 32; O'Reilly & Reitman 285; vide Borba de Moraes I,
pp. 115-116 (Dublin ed.); Sabin [6869] (no mention of plate); Kroepelien
113; Dunmore, French Explorers in the Pacific I, pp, 57-113. "This
account confirmed ... Rousseau's 'noble savage' concept, and inspired
Denis Diderot to pen his denunciation of European contact with indigenous
peoples." -(Hill) Sailing with the Étoile and the Boudeuse,
de Bougainville's expedition was the first successful attempt by
the French to sail around the world. After delivering the Falklands
to Spain, as ordered by his government, he proceeded across the
Pacific to the East Indies, visited Tahiti, Samoa, the New Hebrides,
the Solomon Islands, etc., and returned to France three years later.
The translation into English, as specified on the title, was by
Johann Reinhold Forster, who was naturalist on Cook's second voyage,
but there is thought to be the possibility that it was, in fact,
done by his son, Georg Forster. An important work, "not only
for its discoveries in the Pacific, but also for having been organized
with true scientific precision." -(Borba de Moraes).
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