Les Delices des yeux et de l’esprit, ou Collection Generale des differentes especes de Coquillages que la mer renferme, communiquee Au Public
EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED
THE CHAUNCY-GRAY COPY
Six parts in three volumes. Nuremberg: [No publisher], 1764 (but see below)–1773. First French edition. With 201 instead of the called-for 196 hand-colored engraved plates.
Quarto: (10” x 7 ¾”, 253mm x 194mm).
Vol. I: two binder’s blanks, A-F4 G2, 2A-G4, binder’s blank [$3 signed; –A1, A2, 2A1, 2A2]. 54 leaves, pp. 1-5 (title, blank, 2pp. introduction, text) 6-52; 21-5 (title, blank, 2pp. introduction, text) 26-56. With two hand-colored engraved titles and 65 hand-colored engraved plates (30 + 5 (plates 1, 2 and 5 in the series signed by Moses Harris 1767) in part 1, 30 in part 2).
Vol. II: two binder’s blanks, A-G4, 2A-H4 I2, two binder’s blanks [$3 signed; –A1, A2, 2A1, 2A2]. 62 leaves, pp. 1-5 (title, blank, 2pp. introduction, text) 6-55, blank; 21-5 (title, blank, 2pp. introduction, text) 26-54, [14] (table of equivalences). With two hand-colored engraved titles and 60 hand-colored engraved plates (30 in part 3, 30 in part 4).
Vol. III: binder’s blank, A-F4 a-c4, 2A-I4 K2, binder’s blank [$3 signed; –A1, A2, 2A1; G misbound G1, G3, G2, G4]. 74 leaves, pp. 1-5 (title, blank, 2pp. introduction, text) 6-48, 21 22-24 (table of equivalences); 31-5 (title, blank, 2pp. introduction, text) 36-76. With two hand-colored engraved titles and 70 hand-colored engraved plates (30 in part 5, 40 in part 6).
Bound in contemporary red straight-grained morocco (rebacked, with the original backstrip laid down). On the boards, a triple gilt fillet border with gilt daisies in the corners. On the spines, five raised bands with a gilt roll. Panels gilt. Title gilt to black morocco in the second panel. Number gilt to third panel. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. Gilt inside dentelle. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt. Green silk marking ribbons.
Rebacked with the original backstrip laid down. Lacking the end-matter of parts 1 (a-b4), 3 (a-c4) and 6 [)(4 )( )(2, (a)-(b)4 (c)2], as often. Some damp-fading to the edges of the boards. Extremities scuffed, with wear at the fore-corners. Vol. III bowed somewhat. Quite large margins (often in excess of 50mm at the lower edge, with several lower deckles preserved) and a very little tanning to the upper edges. Contemporary color, with one or two instances of heightening with gum arabic. Signed engraved armorial bookplate of Dr. Charles Chauncy on the front paste-down of vol. I. Bookplate of Thomas Gray of Glasgow on the front paste-down of all volumes. Pencil annotations of previous sales to the recto of the first binder’s blank of vol. I.
The greatest eighteenth-century work of conchology, Knorr’s Delices (a German edition, Vergnügen der Augen und des Gemüths, began publication in 1757) gathers the specimens of the Wunderkammern of Nuremberg, Amsterdam and beyond. The descriptions — there was a contemporaneous Latin edition, and a later Dutch edition — are unusually descriptive and readable, and not, as so often, truncated and terse. Still, nothing lacks in precision; vol. VI includes a concordance to Rumpf, who came to supplant Linnæus as the authority on mollusks.
Knorr died in 1761, and so the introduction to each part but the first is signed by his heirs. Perhaps this is the reason that the title-page is sometimes found bearing the year 1760 and sometimes 1764; his death may well have delayed publication of the first volume. The present copy bears the 1760 date (as observation of the reverse of the title-page of vol. I easily shows), but a small disc of paper has been pasted over the 0, altering it to a 4.
The additional plates of Moses Harris (1730–1787), who was an entomologist as well as an engraver, depict shells, two sea-stars and then, somewhat incongruously to the work, moths and a Goliath beetle. These were adapted from Harris’s plates for Dru Drury’s Illustrations of Natural History (1770–1782).
The first owner was likely Dr. Charles Chauncy (1706–1777), an antiquary and Fellow of the Royal Society. His brother Nathaniel inherited his substantial collections and the library was sold by Leigh and Sotheby in 1790; this was lot 2300. Following him, perhaps, was Dr. John Coakley Lettson (1744–1815), founder of the Medical Society of London in 1773; this is noted by the Sotheby’s catalogue of 1882. At some point the set found its way into the collection of William Thomas Beckford (1760–1844), the notorious collector, rake and bon viveur, whose daughter Susan married the 10th Duke of Hamilton. Beckford’s great-grandson, the 12th Duke, took after Beckford and racked up sufficiently enormous debts that he had to sell the hitherto intact Beckford library at auction in 1882. The purchaser was Britain’s preeminent bookseller, Bernard Quaritch. It was perhaps Quaritch who then sold the work to Thomas Gray. Gray (1820–1910) was a founder member of the Glasgow Natural History Society and in its department of conchology, and himself a major collector of shells. Gray was memorialized as “Glasgow’s Shell Artist” in a 1986 exhibition at the Glasgow Museum and Art Galleries. Gray published in 1848 an illustrated work on seashells, Icones conchyliorum terrestrium. The manuscript notes on the recto of the first binder’s blank of vol. I indicate that the set passed through the hands of a French bookseller.
Nissen ZBI 2236.
Item #6JLR0027
Price: $22,000