Histoire des chênes de l'Amérique, ou Descriptions et Figures de toutes les espèces et variétés de Chênes de l’Amérique Septentrionale, Considérées sous les rapports de la Botanique, de leur culture et de leur usage. Par André Michaux, Membre associé de l’Institut national de France, de la Société d’Agriculture de Charleston, Caroline méridionale, etc.
THE PLESCH–DODD–GOLDEN COPY
ON LARGE PAPER, UNTRIMMED
Paris: Imprimerie de Crapelet, 1801 (An IX). First edition.
Folio (21” x 13 ¾”, 534mm x 350mm): binder’s blank, π2 1-142, binder’s blank [$1 signed]. 30 leaves, pp. [4] (half-title, sellers, title, blank) 1 2-7 [49] (French methodical disposition, Latin methodical disposition, French generic character, Latin generic character, blank; 42pp. text; list of authors, blank). With 36 engraved plated by Plée and Sellier after Pierre Joseph Redouté.
Bound in later marbled boards backed in green pebbled cloth. On the spine, five panels. Author, illustrator and title gilt to russet sheep in the second panel; date gilt to the tail. All edges of the text-block untrimmed.
Some bumping, rubbing and splitting to the extremities. A long vertical crease to the (modern) front binder’s blanks. A little foxing to the half-title and very faint and sporadic appearances to a few plates. Tanning to the deckle edges, with some small splits. Bookplate of Arpad Plesch to the front paste-down. Invoice for £610 for the book dated 27th. Sept. 1977 from Francis Edwards Ltd. to Mr. Edward Dodd laid in.
André Michaux (1746–1802), not to be confused with his more prolific son François-André, was sent to the United States by Louis XVI to explore, collect, describe and, ideally, propagate plants that could be valuable to France. More than a botanizer, Michaux ingratiated himself with the great minds of the young Republic in Philadelphia at the American Philosophical Society, which sponsored[1] his westward trip more than a decade before Lewis and Clark. Recent scholarship by APS’s director, Dr. Patrick Spero (The Scientist Turned Spy, UVA Press 2024), has shown that Michaux was in fact an agent in the establishment of an independent French state in the Amrican West.
The present work, however, shows Michaux’s eyes fixed south, where in 1787 he established a botanic garden in North Charleston, South Carolina. Through the Revolution — Louis XVI may have lost his head but Michaux lost his patron — Michaux put together the present account of the oak trees that could be found in North America, oaks being among the most useful for the building of ships (such as those dispatched by France to help the Revolutionaries win at Yorktown). Their commercial importance occasioned their illustration by the foremost botanical illustrators of the day, Pierre Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), “the Raphael of flowers,” and his brother Henri Joseph (1766–1852). Executed in pure engraving, the leaves, acorns and branches of the oaks bulge and curl forward from the page.
Arpad Plesch (1889–1974) was among the greatest collectors of botanical books in history, and the catalog of 1,001— like the Arabian Nights — of his finest, Mille et un livres botaniques de la collection Arpad Plesch, is a constellation of the genre’s greatest prizes. The present item was lot 529 in the 1975 Sotheby’s London sale of his collection from the Stiftung für Botanik in Liechtenstein. The purchaser was likely Francis Edwards Ltd., which since 1855 has been one of the leading booksellers; their premised at 83 Marylebone High St. in London was described as “the most pleasantly designed bookshop anywhere.” Edwards sold the volume in 1977 to Edward H. Dodd, Jr. (1905–1988), scion and chairman of the publisher Dodd, Mead, founded by his great-great-grandfather. The present volume was lot 128 in the 13 December 2002 Sotheby’s New York sale of his library.
Perhaps John Golden, long a client of Arader’s, was the purchaser. His 22 November 2022 Sotheby’s New York sale of John Golden (the present item lot 36), “Book Illustration in the Age of Scientific Discovery,” contained particularly fine examples of natural history. Mr. Golden, who like Dodd has been involved in the field of printing throughout his life, had a long association with the Stephen Gould Corporation.
Dunthorne 259; Hunt, Redoutéana 8; Nissen, BBI 1358; Oak Spring Sylva 18; Plesch pp. 334-335 (this copy, calling it large paper[2]); Pritzel 6194; Stafleu-Cowan 5957.
[1] The subscription document, preserved at APS, is the only document known to have been signed by the first four presidents: Washington, John Adams, Jefferson and Madison.
[2] Albeit too often claimed (and not recorded in other sources), Plesch is probably right; Arader handled another untrimmed example of the work that was 3 ¼” shorter.
Item #JLR0756
Price: $21,000