[Rarebooks] fa: LAVATER - ESSAYS ON PHYSIOGNOMY 1792 - 5 vols. - Hundreds of Engravings

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 14. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/j9np5bp

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain

Johann Caspar Lavater: Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to  Promote the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind. Illustrated by more than Eight Hundred Engravings Accurately Copied; And Some Duplicates Added From Originals. Executed by, or Under the Inspection of, Thomas Holloway. Translated from the French by Henry Hunter. London: Printed for John Murray, 1792. First edition thus, later issue of vol. I. Five volumes, large 4to (34.5 cm), in full nineteenth-century russia decorated in blind and gilt, page edges gilt; engraved plates and vignettes. ESTC N9984.

With 173 plates, as per the directions to the binder (one number was inadvertently "passed over", so there was no plate 29 issued), and hundreds of in-text engraved vignettes. The artists and engravers include Henry Fuseli (Lavater's close friend, who supervised the project and contributed numerous portraits and scenes), William Blake (with four engravings), Benjamin West, Chodowiecki, Holloway, Bartolozzi, and, in one instance, James Gillray. Monumental in size and scope, sumptuously printed and illustrated, Essays on Physiognomy is considered one of the great plate books of the period. A subsequent edition was published by Stockdale in 1810, but with inferior versions of the plates.

The foundation text of Lavater's pseudo-science in which human character is revealed through physical features. Though ultimately relegated to the dustheap of quackery, "physiognomy" was wildly popular and influential at the time and Lavater one of the most famous men in Europe. As The Gentleman's Magazine remarked in 1801: "His works... were thought as necessary in every family as even the Bible itself. A servant would, at one time, scarcely be hired till the descriptions and engravings of Lavater had been consulted." Even thirty years later, Charles Darwin was nearly rejected for the expedition of HMS Beagle because the captain "was an ardent disciple of Lavater ... and he doubted whether any one with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination for the voyage."

Bindings with some rubbing and scuffing, wear to the edges, bumping and wear to the corners; joints and hinges cracked with several boards held only by the cords; vol. I reinforced at spine ends with binder's tape; browning to a number of plates (including Blake's portrait of Democritus after Raphael), scattered foxing to some others, text leaves with intermittent toning and occasional spots of minor soiling, else internally very good, generally quite clean and fresh. Front paste-downs with the small engraved bookplates of Irwin Laughlin.