Jean-Baptiste and Nicolas Deville - Histoire des plantes de l’Europe - 1737

(Botany, Illustrated) JEAN-BAPTISTE DEVILLE and NICOLAS DEVILLE (editors); GASPARD BAUHIN (1560-1624)
Histoire des plantes de l’Europe, et des plus usitées qui viennent d’Asie, d’Afrique & d’Amerique. ... Avec un Abregé de leurs Qualitéa, & de leurs Vertus specifiques. Divisée en deux tomes et rangée suivant l’ordre du Pinax de Gaspard Bahuin. Tome Premier - Second A Lyon, chex Duplain père et fils, 1737
§ 2 volumes, 12mo (170x100); [48], 442 (recte 444) pp., signature á1-12, é1-12, A-S1-12, T1-6; [2] pp., pp. 445-866, [80] pag., signature: V-Z1-12, Aa-Rr1-12. Beautiful woodcut illustrations depicting plants on each page. Contemporary mottled calf. edges red, gilt spine. Spine of volume 2 renewed. Ancient ownership signature on both title pages. Volume 1: wavy pages, even though no traces of humidity or waterstains are visible. Volume 2: very good.
First printed in 1669 but distributed only two years later, in 1671; Pritzel mistakingly gives 1683 as year of the first edition (Sargnon, p. 56). It is uncertain the existence of a previous edition, dated 1650 (Magnin, p. 195-196). The authorship of this work is somewhat confusing and it is alternatively attributed to Jean-Baptiste and / or Nicolas de Ville (or Deville); the first edition has no indication of the author, while later editions, like the present one, add in the title rangée suivant l’ordre du Pinax de Gaspard Bahuin. The first edition is published by Jean-Baptiste De Ville, who also signs the dedicatory letter at the beginning of the work and to whom the authorship has been thus attributed; the situation is a little more complicated though. The Privilege du roi, permission to print, was given in 1669 to the printer-bookseller Claude Prost (thus the actual author?) but, printed the same year, was finally published only in 1671 by Jean-Baptiste de Ville, probably Prost’s successor. In the present edition the dedication is signed by Nicolas Deville (Jean-Baptiste’s successor?), to whom it is also given the permission (dated 13 March 1706) to publish “Nicolas Deville, Libraire à Lyon ... un livre intitulé : Histoire des Plantes par Gaspard Bahuin ...”, clearly and finally stating the author’s name (see Sargnon, pp. 55-56). “Ainsi que nous en avertit l'auteur, dans une préface, “L’Histoire desPlantes” n'est qu'un abrégé du “Pinaœ” de G. Bauhin, ...” (Sargnon. p. 56); Magnin (p. 193) specifies that it is an abridgement from Dupinet’s translation of Mattioli, arranged according to the method used in his Pinax by G. Bauhin. The work, that became known as the “Petit Bauhin”, was quite succesfull and went through several editions; to each plant is dedicated one page, containing a woodcut illustration, the plant name in different languages and a short description, especially focusing on its medicinal properties. “The part of the work to which the author has evidently given most care and attention, is the one dealing with the healing qualities of plants. It had to be so. Botany was born out of medicine, and for a long time for most authors, if we except Theophrastus, it is one with it; it was not until the 18th century that they became completely separated disciplines... Alongside the scientist who opens new paths, let's make a place for the modest pioneer who strives to enlarge them and make them more practicable. Such was the role of the author of “Histoire des Plants” ... following in the footsteps of his model, he marks one of the first steps towards the natural classification of plants” (Sargnon. p. 59-61, translated). The 850 illustrations are the same, reduced in size, used for the Valgrisi edition of Mattioli.
 Quérard (Fr. Lit.) p. 69; Barbier II, 7915; L. Sargnon Un livre peu connu d'un botaniste lyonnais du XVII ème siècle In: Annales de la Société botanique de Lyon, tome 11, Notes et Mémoires, 1883-1884, pp. 55-61; Antoine Magnin Note sur l'histoire des plantes de l'Europe (connue sous le nom de Petit Bauhin) In: Annales de la Société botanique de Lyon, tome 16, Notes et Mémoires, 1889, pp. 191-202.