Voyages de C. P. Thunberg au Japon, par le Cap de Bonne-Espérance, les isles de la Sonde, &c.

Traduits, rédigés et augmentés de notes… particulièrement sur le Javan et le Malai, par L. Langlès,… et revus, quant à la partie d’histoire naturelle, par J.-B. Lamarck,… A Paris : Benoit Dandré, An IV 1796. Four volumes octavo, handsome contemporary full calf with gilt borders (bindings rubbed, and with a few scuff marks), flat spines elaborately decorated in gilt and with contrasting title and volume labels in gilt; marbled endpapers; Vol. 1: pp. 417, with an engraved frontispiece portrait of Thunberg and [1] plate; Vol. 2: pp. 430 + [4] leaves of plates; Vol. 3: pp. 445 + [4] leaves of plates; Vol. 4: pp. 462 + [19] leaves of plates (6 folding); half-titles and titles with some offsetting at margins, otherwise clean and crisp throughout the four volumes; a fine set.

First French edition of Thunberg’s travel accounts.

Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg, a pupil of Linnaeus and contemporary of Sparrman, was an important figure in the development of the science of botany. In 1771 he was commissioned by the Dutch to collect specimens from southern Africa, the East Indies and Japan for their botanical gardens in Amsterdam and Leiden. He sailed with the Dutch East India company to the Cape, where he spent three years collecting and describing flora and fauna in the colony, making three important excursions into the interior and also meeting and exchanging ideas with Sparrman, who joined Cook’s second voyage when it arrived at the Cape. Thunberg then visited Batavia (Java) for two months in early 1775, before sailing on to Japan, where he remained for almost a year as a privileged guest of the director of the Dutch settlement in the Bay of Nagasaki.

The set we offer here includes many fine plates illustrating flora, fauna and ethnological specimens collected by Thunberg in the Cape, Java and Japan, as well as in Ceylon on his voyage back to the Netherlands. Before returning to Sweden – where, like his compatriot Sparrman, he had been made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences – Thunberg visited London. There he made the acquaintance of both Sir Joseph Banks and J. R. Forster, encounters which undoubtedly led to the confluence of scientific knowledge gained on Cook’s voyages and Thunberg’s own. Thunberg’s later study of Japanese plants, Flora Japonica, was published in 1784 and was the first major treatise on Japanese botany published in the west.

Cordier, Japonica, 447; Brunet 5:850