[Barthélemy, Jean-Jacques]

Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, dans le milieu du quatrième siècle avant l'ère vulgaire. Tome premier [–second –troisième –quatrième]. AND Recueil de cartes géographiques plans, vues et médailles de l'ancienne Grèce, relatifs au voyage du jeune Anacharis, précédé d'une analyse critique des cartes

THE BLACKMER SET of the 
GREAT FICTIONAL VOYAGE 
AROUND ANCIENT GREECE

 

Five volumes. Paris: De Bure l’aîné, 1788. First edition.

Voyage: quarto (11 5/16” x 8 7/16”, 287mm x 215mm).
Vol. I[1]: binder’s blank, a⁴ b⁴ c²(–c2) _χA⁴ _χB-E⁴ Α-Zzz⁴ Aaaa², binder’s blank [$2 signed]. 307 leaves, pp. i-v (half-title, blank, title, blank, preface) vj-vij [11] (blank, 2pp. chronology, 7pp. contents, blank); Essai sur la vie de J. J. Barthélemy: _χ1-5 (half-title, blank, title, blank, text) _χ6-39 [1] (blank); 1 2-553 [3] (blank, errata, blank). [=xviii; iv, 36; 553, iii]
Vol. II: binder’s blank, π⁴ (π4 blank) A-Mmmm⁴, binder’s blank [$2 signed]. 328 leaves, pp. [8] (half-title, blank, title, blank, 2pp. contents, 2 blanks) 1 2-646 [2] (errata, blank).
Vol. III: binder’s blank, π⁴ (–π1) A-Ffff⁴ χ1, binder’s blank [$2 signed; Ttt2 signed “*”]. 304 leaves, pp. [6] (half-title, blank, title, blank, 2pp. contents) 1 2-599 [3] (blank, errata, blank).
Vol. IV: binder’s blank, π⁴ (–π1) A-Bbb⁴ a-z⁴ aa², binder’s blank [$2 signed; –aa2]. 289 leaves, pp. [6] (half-title, blank, title, blank, 2pp. contents) 1 2-383 [1] (blank save catchword) i ij-clxxxiv [4] (imprimatur, blank, errata, blank). [=vi, 384, clxxxviii]
Recueil[2]: quarto (11 5/16” x 8 ½”, 288mm x 218mm): binder’s blank, a⁴ b-c⁴ d2 d1 d4 d3 e⁴ f²(–f2) χ², binder’s blank [$2 signed; d2 signed d]. 23 leaves, pp. i-v (title, blank, 2pp. list of plates, text) vj-xxiv xxvij-xxviij xxv-xxvj xxxj-xxxij xxix-xxx xxxiij-xxxix lx xl-xli [4] (4pp. Discours prononcé a la convention nationale; Par J. Dusaulx, Sur la mort du citoyen J. J. Barthelemy). [=42; 4] With 31 engraved plates: 24 double-page maps, of which 11 are hand-colored in outline; 5 double-page architecture plans; 1 double-page view and 1 double-page plate of coins.

Bound (ca. 1795) in polished calf, with a scrollwork border gilt. On the spine, five raised bands. Title gilt to russet morocco in the second panel, number gilt to russet morocco in the third. Zig-zag gilt tooling in the panels. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards, continuing to the turn-ins. Deep purple end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt. Burgundy silk marking ribbons.

Worn, with losses to the head- and tail-pieces (except for the tails of voll. I and the Recueil). Hinges cracked, particularly vol. III. Some rubbing to the boards and extremities, with patches of loss. Dampstain to the lower edge of vol. I _χD4-L4. Intermittent foxing and some tanning, particularly to voll. I and II. Graphite marginalia to vol. III pp. 350-351 and 577; and graphite sidelining to vol. IV pp. 171, 190, 271, 276, 286-287. Ex-libris Henry Blackmer to the front paste-down of each volume. Armorial bookplate of the Chateau de Chacenay to the recto of the front binder’s blank of each volume.


Even without considering the Odyssey the first western travelogue, we can credit the Greeks with developing (if not inventing) the genre as a “periplous” (περίπλους): a “voyage around” the islands and mainland of the eastern Mediterranean. The earliest periploi, written in the late VIc bc, do not survive except in quotations in later works; the first surviving example dates to the mid-IVc (by “Pseudo-Scylax”). Later authors such as Strabo (Ic bc–ad Ic) and Pausanias (ad IIc) were read widely throughout the Renaissance, providing a scaffold onto which archaeology could grow.

By the XVIIIc, Greek archaeology was in its infancy (beyond standing temples such as those in Athens and Sounion), but the Grand Tour had introduced young European aristocrats to Greece in its modern form as crossroads between the Ottomans and the Balkans. Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (1716–1795) was a Provençal classicist and abbé who came to Paris and rose eventually to be keeper of the Cabinet des Médailles, which held ancient coins as well as other small precious objects. He was in the vanguard of French archaeologists in Italy, whither he accompanied the future duc du Choiseul, who served as ambassador to Rome 1755–1757. Upon his return to Paris, Barthélemy began his magnum opus: the fictional voyage of Anacharsis the Younger around Greece, for which he was elected to fauteuil 19 of the Académie Française (later taken by Chateaubriand), as well as to the Royal Society.

The voyage, sometimes described erroneously as a literary hoax or forgery, is properly a historical novel: an imagined narrative (as claimed in the preface to vol. I) of a young man traveling Greece in the years before the birth of Alexander the Great (356 bc), namesake of Anacharsis the Scythian, one of the Seven Sages who was reputed to have traveled to Greece in the VIc bc. Barthélemy has Anacharsis meet Plato and Aristotle, Xenophon and Demosthenes and finally depart Greece when he’s repulsed by the tyranny of Philip II of Macedon and later Alexander. The atlas volume includes maps by Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage, who worked under Barthélemy at the Cabinet des Médailles; some are even historicized, with diagrams of ancient battles.

The reception of the work, just a year before the French Revolution (the parallels between Louis XVI and Alexander the Great surely evident), was tremendous. Not only did it fulfill the time-travel fantasy doubtless harbored by all Classicists but it also served to galvanize the cause of Philhellenism — advocacy for Greek independence from the Ottomans, which would be achieved at the end  of the 1820’s — in France as well as in Britain, Germany and the United States.

The Voyage went into many subsequent editions and expansions, but its first appearance (issued simultaneously, per Brunet, in a more economical octavo format in seven volumes plus the atlas) — especially in the waning years of the French monarchy — has particular power as the beginning of the Philhellene movement. The present set surpasses that in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, both in its inclusion of errata in all four text volumes as well as the inclusion of two biographical works: Mancini-Nivernois’s 1795 Essai sur la vie de J. J. Barthélemy (Paris: Didot le jeune for G. De Bure l’ainé, 1795 (l’an III); 40pp.) and an anonymous Discours prononcé a la Convention nationale par J. Dusaulx, sur la mort du citoyen J.J. Barthelemy (published by the Imprimerie nationale, probably also in 1795; 4pp.). The latter is particularly rare, appearing separately just four times in institutional collections (all in octavo over three pages, but with the same text).

Doubtless these rare inclusions are what brought this set into the hands of Henry Myron Blackmer II (1923–1988), the Colorado-born Philhellene and bibliophile who in 1963 built himself a neo-classical mansion with commanding views of the Acropolis. Navari’s 1989 catalogue of Blackmer’s 1,946 books related to Greece and the Levant (the present set no. 83) has become the standard reference for the subject. Blackmer writes of the work: “it is difficult to overestimate the importance of Anacharsis in the development of French neo-classicism and in the creation of philhellenic sentiment.” The set was sold at his Sotheby’s London sale 11 October 1989 (lot 386), perhaps to Lina and Panos Pervanas, who in 1988 bought the Château de Chacenay in Aube, about halfway from Paris to Basel. The set was sold at Sotheby’s London 26 November 1996 (lot 236).

Blackmer 83 (this set); Brunet 674; Rahir 309.

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[1] Bound in following c1: Essai sur la vie de J. J. Barthélemy, par Louis-Jules-Barbon Mancini-Nivernois. Paris: Didot le jeune for G. De Bure l’ainé, 1795 (l’an III).

[2] Bound in following f1: Discours prononcé a la Convention nationale par J. Dusaulx, sur la mort du citoyen J.J. Barthelemy: séance du 16 floréal, l’an troisième de la République française une & indivisible: imprimé par ordre de la Convention nationale. [Paris:] Imprimerie nationale[, 1795?].

Item #JLR0859

Price: $7,500