Beschreibung:

HAMILTON, Sir William (1730-1803). Campi Phlegraei . Naples: sold by Pietro Fabris 1776-1779. 3 parts [including Supplement ] bound in 2 volumes, 2° (443 x 314mm). Text in English and French. Double-page hand-coloured engraved map by Giuseppe Guerra after Fabris and 59 hand-coloured etched plates [?some by Fabris] after Fabris, some heightened with gum arabic. (Scattered light spotting on text leaves, light oxidisation of colour on some plates, smudging or spotting of border wash on some plates, part I with unobtrusive light marginal dampstaining affecting inner corner of title and some text leaves, marginal stain on text leaf to plate 38, part II with light offsetting on map.) Contemporary half russia gilt over marbled-paper covered boards, spines gilt in compartments and lettered in 3, red-speckled edges (boards lightly rubbed, extremities rubbed, upper cover of first volume detached, second volume neatly rebacked and with repairs to the corners). Provenance : British Museum (inkstamps and 'DUPLICATE , 1804' inkstamps on blank versos of titles, map, plate I, 54, and leaf II, Y2; pencilled shelfmarks 'IV , II.c.') -- GHJ and AJ, Trewithen, 1923 (bookplate on upper pastedown of first volume). FIRST EDITION OF HAMILTON'S 'MAGNIFICENT PUBLICATION' (Jenkins and Sloan). Although Hamilton's Observations on Mount Vesuvius (published by the Royal Society in 1772) was well-received at the time and ran to three editions, the Campi Phlegraei is the best known of Hamilton's four works on volcanic activity, and 'provided a clearer, more precise and useful explanation of volcanic activity than ever published before, which underlined Hamilton's own theories about volcanoes being creative forces and enabled him to answer in one publication the lists of questions about volcanoes and rocks he had been receiving from correspondents all over Europe. Its publication in French and English provided it with a market not only in his own country but throughout Europe as well, and an international audience for a British discovery' (Jenkin and Sloan). Pietro Fabris (fl.1756-1784), an artist living in Naples, was commissioned and trained by Hamilton to sketch the volcanoes of southern Italy. In four years Hamilton climbed Vesuvius at least twenty-two times, sometimes at great risk, since both he and Fabris wished to make sketches at every stage of the eruptions (the figures of Hamilton, often wearing a red coat, and Fabris, in blue, appear in the plates). The plates are so opaquely coloured that the engraved base beneath is hardly visible: indeed, Hamilton himself describes them as 'executed with such delicacy and perfection, as scarcely to be distinguished from the original drawings themselves' (Part I, p. 6). Hamilton then asked Fabris to undertake the publication of his letters to the Royal Society, to be illustrated by engravings after the orginal drawings. Fabris was the sole distributor of the work, which was originally published at 60 Neapolitan ducats for Part I and Part II; the price of the Supplement is not recorded. Jenkins and Sloan state that 'some copies have bodycolour and gum arabic added to the etchings [as the present copy does], perhaps indicating that they were de luxe versions'. Brunet III, 31 ('Ouvrage curieux et bien exécuté'); ESTC T71231 (parts I-II) and T71232 (part III); I. Jenkins and K. Sloan Vases and Volcanoes (London: 1996), 'Catalogue' 43; Lewine p.232; Lowndes II, p.989. (2)