An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature. By Oliver Goldsmith. In Eight Volumes, Printed for J. Nourse in London in 1774.
FIRST EDITION, complete in 8 volumes.
-------------------
A History of the Earth, and Animated Nature is a work of natural history by Oliver Goldsmith. First published in 1774 in eight volumes, it attempted to bring together a history of the earth with a description of its geographical features and many of its species. Many further editions of the work were published in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century. These were often abridged versions of the original, in three, four or six volumes.
In George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860), Maggie Tulliver reads A History of the Earth as a young child. She describes its contents to the semi-literate miller, Luke:
"elephants, and kangaroos, and the civet cat, and the sun-fish, and a bird sitting on its tail… There are countries full of those creatures, instead of horses and cows… Shouldn’t you like to know about them, Luke?’ " (Book I, Ch.4)
-------------------
Size: 140 x 209 mm (approx.)
Condition:
Uniformly bound contemporary 18th century full calf, joints worn with some cracked, tender, etc, but with all boards attached. Spines rebacked retaining earlier tooled labels, some chipped with a bit of loss. Wear to extremities, shelf wear, etc. Boards scuffed with an ink stain to the front board of the sixth volume. Volume one binding significantly warped but appears uniform with the others from the shelf, strangely without any shelf lean. Some minor staining with text blocks toned else very good internally, endpapers more heavily stained in each volume. Front blank of the first volume with a small tear at the foot with a small amount of loss. Title page lacking from volume three. Lacks pp.31-32 in volume four. pp.37-38 torn but fully present in volume five. Bookplate to front pastedown of volume five (only) of Viscount de Vesci.
