Bestiaries of Five Centuries. Description and Introduction by the late Claus Nissen. Edited and Revised by Sandra Raphael. With an Introductory by S. Peter Dance.

Amsterdam, Antiquariaat Junk B. V. and Antiquariaat Schierenberg, 2024. Folio (29.8 x 21.3 cm). With sixty-one original prints, many hand-coloured, from famous zoological books published between 1491 and 1878; each mounted, matted, and numbered 1-28, 29a, 29b, 30-60, and one double-sized, unnumbered print, in full-colour facsimile; all in an original cloth dropbox (50.0 x 36.5 x 8.5 cm), together with an explanatory book (96 pp.; printed softcover). = The English edition of Claus Nissen's collection of original zoological illustrations Tierbücher aus fünf Jahrhunderten. This work contains sixty-one original illustrated pages and plates from works by German, English, French, Italian, Dutch and Swiss writers from the 15th to 19th centuries. With an introduction and bibliographies of all authors. Printing techniques include wood-engravings, copper engravings, lithographs, and chromolithographs. In 1968, a German edition of just one hundred copies was issued, without Peter S. Dance's introduction. Plans for an English edition were delayed. In 1990, the music scholar and bookseller Albrecht Gabriel "Albi" Rosenthal (1914-2004) translated the work and added more references. But publication was delayed once again. Finally, in 2024, Nissen's wish to present his work to the English-speaking world became reality. However, due to the limited material available, only ninety copies instead of a scheduled one hundred copies were produced. It is noteworthy that this is not a direct translation of the German edition. Some of the plates (and hence the explanatory text revised) were taken from different books than the German edition, more focussing on the English-speaking authors. This edition is expanded with a preface by the British malacologist and biohistorian S. Peter Dance. Two leaves are from incunabula (Ortus Sanitatis), of which one is hand-coloured; two are post-incunabula (Gart der Gusundheit [1509], and Hortus Sanitatis [1517]; six are later 16th-century works. [The unnumbered double-sized plate has a mounted facsimile of a 6th-century codex published as the Wiener Dioskurides]. Authors include Pierre Belon, Hendrik Ruysch, Adam Lonitzer, Gaius Plinius Secundus, Conrad Gessner, Ulisse Aldrovandi, John Jonston, Francis Willughby, Eleazar Albin, George Edwards, August Johan Roesel von Rosenhof, Johann Michael Seligmann, George-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, Thomas Pennant, William Frederic Martyn, Sir William Jardine, Georges Cuvier, John James Audubon, etc. In general, the quality of the plates is very good. A few plates show signs of age, including toning, foxing, or offsetting. Otherwise, in mint condition. Many zoological groups are represented but there is an emphasis on birds, reptiles, and insects. Every copy is unique, each box contains different plates or pages taken from the same books. The images on the website, therefore, represent a randomly selected example only.…