L'AMI DE LA NATURE

Paris: [Printed by Didot l'aîné for] Chez Buisson, 1787. Second Edition. 159 x 92 mm. (6 1/4 x 3 5/8"). 106, [4] pp.
Extremely pretty contemporary dark green morocco, gilt, covers with plain double-rule and garland border as well as oblique inward-facing fleurons at corners, flat spine divided into compartments by pentaglyph and metope roll, classical urn centerpieces, red morocco label, gilt turn-ins, endpapers printed with rows of gilt stars and dots, all edges gilt. Front pastedown with bookplate of "F. Raisin / Genevens. / Advoc." Spine just faintly and evenly sunned, minor stains to endpapers from binder's glue, one opening with vague brown spots (possibly from a pressed botanical specimen?), but A VERY FINE COPY, the binding lustrous and unworn, the text clean, fresh, and bright, and the margins more than generous.

This attractively bound paean to Nature praises the joys of the countryside and the relief it provides from the tumult of the world. One of a very few works by the little-known Marseilles civil servant Joseph François Henri de Girard, it enjoyed considerable popularity at its release; our second edition appeared in the same year as the first. Reflecting the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the work found an appreciative audience in the tense years leading up to the French Revolution, when the world became especially turbulent. Previous owner Frédéric Raisin (1851-1923) was a Geneva attorney, judge, and bibliophile who also wrote and translated poetry. The binding is elegantly restrained in its Neoclassical design, as well as remarkably well preserved..