Ansichten der Natur ...

A LOVELY COPY OF THE RARE FIRST EDITION

First edition. First volume [all published]. 12mo. Contemporary mottled calf, red & green morocco labels to spine, gilt, extremities a little rubbed, but a very good copy. viii, 334pp. Tübingen, J.G. Cotta,

Ansichten der Natur was Humboldt's most popular work, and remains a landmark moment in nature writing. It takes the form of a series of essays based on observations made on flora, fauna and climate in the "forests of the Orinoco, the Steppes of Venezuela, and the mountain wildernesses of Peru and Mexico" (Preface).

 

His distinctive blend of scientific observation with literary prose is cited by Henry David Thoreau as a key influence on his own work. "It was not a travel book nor a scientific text-book but an 'aesthetic treatment of natural history' - in other words it was intended to appeal to the emotions and inform the mind at one and the same time." (Botting). Humboldt "described nature as a web of life, with plants and animals dependent on each other - a world teeming with life ... [Ansichten der Natur] would inspire several generations of scientists and poets" (Wulf). While on the Beagle, Charles Darwin asked his brother to send a copy to Uruguay where he planned to collect it and would join the four other works by Humboldt in the ship's library. A copy of Ansichten der Natur could hardly be more apt as Humboldt writes of the "gradual transformation of the species" therein. Johann von Goethe and Ralph Waldo Emerson also read and admired it.

 

A lovely copy of the first edition of Humboldt's early and important work. Auction records list just four copies, the last in 2013.

 

Botting,D., Humboldt and the Cosmos (Sphere, 1973) p.189; Lowenberg 181; Sabin, 33702; Wulf, A., The Invention of Nature. The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt ... (London, 2016), p.133.

 

Stock Code: 244437