Humboldt rebound
HUMBOLDT, Alexander von. Aspects of Nature, In Different Lands and Different Climates; with Scientific Elucidations … Translated by Mrs. Sabine. London, Printed for Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, and John Murray, 1849.
Two volumes, small 8vo. Slightly later fine half-calf over marbled boards, spines with raised bands and contrasting lettering-pieces, top edges gilt, matching marbled and papers; pp. [iii]-xv, [7], 301; [iv], 347, 32; spines a little faded, light rubbing to extremities, a fine copy in an attractive binding; 20th-century bookplate Robert J. Hayhurst inside front cover of volume one.
This is the scarce first edition in English, a landmark in nature writing heralded by contemporaries as the very "poetry of geography" (Martin, p. 152). The Prussian polymath was the first person to conceive of the planetary ecosystem as a connected whole and to develop the idea of human-induced climate change. Today, he is remembered as the "father of the environmental movement" (Wulf, p. 58). Aspects of Nature, is a collection of observational essays which blend science with vibrant literary imagery, was Humboldt's most polished work. It first appeared in 1808, published simultaneously in Tübingen by J. G. Cotta as Ansichten der Natur and in Paris as Tableaux de la nature. 'Humboldt created a completely new genre - a book that combined lively prose and rich landscape descriptions with scientific observation in a blueprint for much of nature writing today. Of all the books he would write, this remained Humboldt's favourite. [and] would inspire several generations of scientists and poets over the next decades. Henry David Thoreau read it, as did Ralph Waldo Emerson who declared that Humboldt had swept clean 'this sky full of cobwebs'. And Charles Darwin would ask his brother to send a copy to Uruguay where he hoped to pick it up when the Beagle stopped there' (Wulf, p. 133). The translation is by Elizabeth Juliana Leeves Sabine (1807-1879) appeared in autumn 1849, based on the text of the third edition in German. Sabine translated the first two volumes of Humboldt's Cosmos, a translation which was considered the most authoritative version in English at the time. She also translated Richard Taylor's Scientific Memoirs (1841) and Ferdinand von Wrangell's Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea (1840). Much of her work was incorrectly ascribed to her husband, Edward Sabine (1788-1883), who would later become president of the Royal Society.
See: Alison E. Martin, Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt's Works in Nineteenth-century Britain, 2018; Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature, 2015.
Provenance: Robert J. Hayhurst inherited and improved a successful group of retail pharmacies, John Hayhurst & Son, based in Nelson, Lancashire, as well as being a discerning book collector.
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