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140 EXQUISITELY COLOURED PLATES OF 2500 BUTTERFLIES & MOTHS
FELDER, Cajetan and Rudolf. Lepidoptera (= Reise der österreichischen Fregatte Novara um die Erde in den Jahren 1857, 1858, 1859 unter den Befehlen des Commodore B. von Wüllerstorf-Urbair. Zoologischer Theil. Zeiter Band. Zweite Abtheilung).
Vienna, Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1865-1875. Large 4to. 5 parts (plus a duplicate set of the plates for parts 1-3) in 2 volumes. With 140 lithographic plates showing 2500 butterflies and moths in the atlas volume, exquisitely hand-coloured and highlighted with gum arabic as published, and the first 74 plates (the butterflies) also uncoloured in the text volume. With the original printed front wrappers for the three text parts bound at the end of the text volume. Contemporary half morocco.
| Orders and Information | € 8500 |
A magnificent display of 2500 butterflies and moths in 140 lithographic plates, exquisitly coloured and highlighted with gum arabic, as published, and with the extensive entomological reports (which were published only for the butterflies) of the 1857-1859 Novara expedition around the world. Junk notes that copies with the publisher's original colouring are "sehr selten," which is not surprising since the original publication price was 240 marks in 1877! (uncoloured copies were "only" 116 marks). The colouring could not be better, with even the iridescent butterflies rendered with remarkable realism. The present copy includes all 140 plates with this remarkable colouring in a single volume, while the 74 butterfly plates, issued with parts 1-3, are also present, uncoloured, in the text volume, which is in the rare first issue, published in parts from 1865 to 1867, rather than the usual 1875 reissue.
These five parts together, issued from 1865 to 1875, comprise the II. Band II. Abtheilung of the zoological volumes of the reports of the expedition. When publication began, the detailed texts of the reports were clearly expected to cover both butterflies and moths, so the original title-pages for the first three parts (covering butterflies), in the present copy, give the general title "Lepidoptera" with subtitles for the I.-III. Heft, respecively "Rhopalocera Papilionidae" (title-page undated; wrapper-title sometimes 1864 and sometimes, as here 1865, though apparently not issued until 1865), "Rhopalocera" (title-page and wrapper-title 1865) and "Rhopalocera. (Schluss.)" (title-page 1866-March 1867; wrapper-title 1867), and with no other preliminaries (the wrappers give the title "Reise ..." as noted above). The plates for the moths followed in the IV.-V. Heft (1874 and 1875 respectively), but the detailed reports for the moths were never produced. The text of parts 1-3 was therefore reissued with the original part-titles omitted, a new general title-page for the three parts together "Rhopalocera ... Text." (1864-March 1867), a series title-page "Reise ... : Lepidoptera ... Rhopalocera. Text." (1864-1867), a new foreword dated May 1875 (pp. iii-vi) and an Inhalts-Vereichniss (pp. [537], 538-548). The publication dates in the plates themselves (apparently sometimes published individually as well) show a gap between plate 107 (1868: the last issued with part 4) and 108 (1872: the first issued with part 5). between these it must have become clear that the detailed text for the moths would not appear, so each of the 33 plates of part 5 is preceded by a single letterpress leaf with basic information about the moths depicted.
The volume of coloured plates with the bookplate of the English entomologist Frederick DuCane Godman (1834-1919), and the volume with parts 1-3 with the 1903 gift bookplate from the American entomologist Samuel Hubbard Scudder (1837-1911) to the Boston Society of Natural History. In very good condition, with one of the colour plates badly foxed in the margins, but only slightly in the printed image, and an occasional text leaf slightly foxed. A rare masterpiece of coloured butterfly and moth illustration, with the text in the rare first issue.
