GESSNER, Salomon. New Idylles … Translated by W. Hooper MD. With A Letter to M: Fuslin, on Landscape Painting, and the Two Friends of Bourbon, a Moral Tale, by M. Diderot. London, Printed for S. Hooper … & G. Robinson … 1776. 
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Large 8vo (255 × 182 mm) in half-sheets, pp. [4], 129, [1], plus etched and engraved title-page, head- and tailpieces, and 9 plates by Sparrow or Chambars after Gessner, opposite which the nine original plates by Gessner (dated 1771) have been tipped in; printed on thick paper; some light spotting only; near-contemporary mottled calf, marbled endpapers, a trifle rubbed, corners worn, rebacked, hinges reinforced with cloth tape; early ink ownership inscription of G. Cumberland to the front flyleaf.
First edition in English of the Moralische Erzæhlungen und Idyllen (Zurich, 1772), the Swiss painter–poet’s depiction of uncorrupted pastoral bliss, which led to his becoming one of the first German-speaking writers to achieve international fame. ‘The former works of M. Gessner have been received with that applause by Europe in general, as renders all apology for this publication superfluous, and all commendation by any individual unnecessary. The translator, however, cannot refrain from declaring the singular satisfaction he enjoys in presenting the English reader with a work, he thinks, equal in the beauty of composition (allowance made for the difference of language) to the Idyls of Theocritus, or Virgil, and far superior in benevolent and pathetic sentiments. ‘The historical plates and vignets with which this work is embellished, were all designed and drawn by M. Gessner himself. ‘The story of the Two Friends of Bourbon was communicated by M. Diderot to our author, who thought proper to publish it with these Idyls, as a monument of friendship that the cultivation of letters alone has produced between two men, whom distant countries have ever held separate’ (Advertisement). Adams DD46 (‘Première traduction anglaise d’un conte de Diderot’); Morgan 2319; for the first edition, see Borst 234 and Goedeke IV/I, 82, 9.
590,- EUR
inkl. 7% USt./incl. 7% VAT
Sachgebiete: Literatur bis ca. 1900, Schweiz
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