Extremely rare first edition of ”Journey to Italy” (1786)

[Carl August Ehrensvärd]:

Resa til Italien, 1780, 1781, 1782. Skrifven 1782 i Stralsund.

Stockholm, tryckt i Kongl. tryckeriet, 1786. 4to. (30 x 24,5 cms.) [6] + 84 pp. + 38 uncoloured line-engravings.

Original grey boards, very worn, somewhat soiled and stained, some wear along edges. Occasional light staining, short marginal tears, slight creasing and finger-soiling to text, ten leaves with slight marginal corner loss, rear cover with large ring-shaped stain (from a plate?), visible on final few text-leaves mainly as an indentation, spine of binding restored. Old ownership inscriptions dated 1850, 1889, 1924 (i. a. Palmstierna) on first leaf. Plates mostly uncut and inserted at end, they are unaffected by the stain to rear cover and final text leaves, and were probably inserted when the spine was restored. (The plates were bought separately, and would in this case have been stored apart from the text, which is still in the original grey boards.) Inscription ”Complät” in upper margin of first plate, plates [16], [26] and [37] with slight tear in a few places along the plate edge.

The extremely rare first edition of Ehrensvärd’s ”Journey to Italy” (1786), printed in just 50 copies (or possibly 100, according to pencilled annotation in this copy), mainly for presentation. The plates were probably engraved by the author’s friend Elias Martin, and the book was sold, with or without plates, by his brother Samuel Martin, a bookbinder.

The plates are printed on slightly differing paper sizes and qualities in this copy, and about ten have lightly etched page & line references below the image. When the book was reissued in 1819, from the same plates, the references hade been engraved clearly and uniformly on all the plates, and in a few cases tone had been added (rather unsuccessfully) in aquatint.

Lindberg, Swedish books, 52.

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