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[Ackerman] Gerning, Johann Isaac Von PICTURESQUE TOUR ALONG THE RHINE FROM MENTZ TO COLOGNE: With Illustrations of the Scenes of Remarkable Events, and of Popular Traditions. Translated from the German by John Black. London R. Ackerman 1820

First edition thus, and a very fine large-paper copy with the aquatint plates delicately hand-colored. With 24 full page and hand-coloured aquatint plates by T. Sutherland after C.G. Schultz, and one large folding engraved map hand-colour in outline. Folio, in near contemporary nineteenth-century straight-grained crimson morocco richly tooled in gilt. A very pleasing, attractive and complete copy.

First English edition and one of the most beautiful colour-plate books of the 19th-century, in its rare first issue (with the plates unnumbered and a large part of them dated 1819). Although a small format German version of Gerning's work was published in 1819, this was the first edition to be illustrated, and the first in English. It is also the first installment in Ackerman's Picturesque Tour series, a major series in color-plate book printing. The book describes a trip down the Rhine on that part of the river generally considered the most romantic and charming. The account contains not only topographical descriptions, but considerable historical information and details of popular traditions.

$US8500

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