The Library of Stephen J. Farber

8vo (216 x 140 mm). Half title, 101 color-printed plates with tissue guards (minor offsetting, very light spotting throughout.) Original red straight-grain paper over boards, morocco lettering-pieces gilt (rubbing, splits to joints, wear to spine ends, labels partially peeling). Provenance: sold, Heritage Auctions (4 November 2015, sale 6148 lot 45200).

FIRST EDITION, ONE OF ONLY THREE COPIES EXTANT OF ONE OF THE FIRST ZOOLOGY BOOKS PRINTED WITH COLOR PLATES.

Very little is known about the production of Nouveau Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle..., as during the period in which it was printed French publishers faced unprecedented challenges due to the transition to industrial printing, strict censorship laws imposed by Napoleon, and the destruction of the printing guilds which to that point had dominated the French book trade. French bibliographer Joseph-Marie Quérard, whose La France littéraire gives only a passing mention to the present work in his section dealing with Manuel, claims that it "appears to have been merely projected, for no mention of it is found anywhere other than in Mr. Debray's volume" (translated from the original French). All bibliographers agree that at sixty francs the book was prohibitively expensive and given the upheaval reverberating through France at this time, and with only twenty-four subscribers listed (nearly all of whom were either royalty or nobility) it comes as little surprise that a second volume was never produced.

EXCEEDINGLY RARE: The present example is one of only three examples traced and the only one known to have ever appeared at auction, with the other two in the holdings of the Field Museum Library (Chicago) and the U.S. Department of the Interior Library. Nissen, DZB, 2686; Quérard, La France littéraire, V, p. 497