Natural history

Natural history occupies a place of distinction in the antiquarian book trade: descriptive treatises, atlases and collections of engraved or coloured plates, in which the scholar's rigour meets the draughtsman's talent. Born of the desire to describe, classify and understand the world, the discipline unfolded from Antiquity to the Enlightenment before flourishing in the 19th century, carried forward by great expeditions and cabinets of curiosities. It is here represented across several fields — geology, palaeontology, botany… — each bearing witness to its own particular way of observing and depicting nature.

Its bibliophilic appeal lies as much in the quality of the illustration, often hand-coloured, as in the rarity of the print run or the provenance of the copies, long preserved in learned libraries. The collector finds here the trace of an enduring fascination with the living world and with the territories that these works helped to reveal.