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A famous Rococo poem by the most successful and typical representative of a literary Rococo movement - a highlight of early colour-printing

GESSNER, Salomon.
Mort d'Abel, Poëme. Traduit par Hubert.

With stipple-engraved colour-printed frontispiece, and 5 stipple-engraved colour printed plates by Colibert, Casenave and Clément after the designs of Nicolas Moniau.

Paris, Chez Defer de Maisonneuve, 1793. Large 4to. Contemporary scored calf, spine richly gilt, with red morocco title-label, lettered in gold, ornamental gilt borders on sides, gilt inner dentelles and binding edges, g.e., marbled endpapers. With stipple-engraved colour-printed frontispiece, and 5 stipple-engraved colour printed plates by Colibert, Casenave and Clément after the designs of Nicolas Moniau. 161, (3 blank) pp.

First edition of Hubert's prose translation of Gessner's celebrated poem Der Tod Abels, which was first published in German in 1758.
Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), known throughout Europe for literary works of pastoral themes and his rococo style, was a bookseller's son, and started his career as an apprentice to the bookseller Spener in Berlin. Giving up this employment, he lived for a time by painting and engraving. In 1750 he settled in Zurich, continuing to live by painting, including painting on porcelain. Later he was also a town councillor and a forestry superintendent who also ran an important publishing house, from which he published his books with his own excellent etchings. He began to write idylls in poetic prose, beginning with Daphnis (1754). His Idyllen (1756-72) achieved a nation-wide success. In Der Tod Abels (1758) he attempted an epic in prose in five 'Chants', becoming soon his most renowned work, and making him the most successful and typical representative of a literary rococo movement. In his idylls, Gessner is indebted to Theocritus and Virgil, creating an idealized, orderly, almost horticultural state of nature.
His Tod Adams was reprinted many times and was translated into 20 languages, including Welsh, Latin, and Hebrew. The English translation ran through many editions and was admired by the Romantic writers Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, and Wordsworth. The final collection of his works was published at Zürich in 1841.
The beautiful stipple engraved plates are after the drawings by Nicolas Monsiau. They were engraved by Colibert, Casenave, and Clément, and printed in colour in one run through the press. The six plates in this copy are in their first state, before numbers; two have the artist's & engraver's name; 3 have only the engraver's name.
Nicolas-Andr‚ Monsiau (1754-1837) was a Parisian who attained some reputation as a painter of both classical and modern subjects. He was elected to the Academy in 1789.

Good large-paper copy of a rare colour-printed plates-book.- (Binding sl. rubbed, with small library-labels; library-stamp of the library of the monastery St. Elisabeth in Heythuysen (Limb.) on title and in lower margin of page 91).

Cohen-de Ricci, col. 436; Sander 780; Brunet II, 1568; Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 151-2; Burch, p. 93; Fürstenberg 122, and 205.

Related Subjects: 18th Century Colour Printing Literary History

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