ARAGO, Jacques

Souvenirs d'un Aveugle. Voyage autour du monde... Chasses. Drame.

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H.-L. Delloye Paris, 1840. Large octavo, 15 plates, untrimmed with an early library stamp on the title-page; a handsome copy in polished half calf, spine banded and gilt. Fine copy of this unusual work by the prolific and rather eccentric Arago, which includes vivid descriptions of the natural history of Australia. The fifteen dramatic plates are all after Arago's own drawings, and include an image of an Australian Aborigine confronted with a rearing Black Snake.

A rather good note in Hill confirms that this work is an unofficial supplement to Arago's 1839 Hortet et Ozanne edition of Souvenirs d'un aveugle, a richly illustrated account that is 'much prized'. The work is a popular account of hunting from around the world, with each of the sections devoted to a different animal. Two sections are devoted to animals of Australia, the Black Snake (pp. 152-165) and the Kangaroo (pp. 367-379). If anything, Arago's tale of the Black Snake is the more arresting, telling the story of an Aboriginal man bartering with a plantation owner before coming face to face with the snake among the eucalypts. The lengthy description of Sydney and its environs is based, of course, on his own visit when he completed the circumnavigation in the Uranie under the command of Louis de Freycinet. Arago was the official artist on the expedition, which spent considerable time in Hawaii as well as New South Wales and Western Australia.

By the time this version of his book reached the public, the remarkable Arago had lost his sight: hence the new title which he reused for several different works, the Souvenirs d'un aveugle.

With the bookplate of the Comte Polydor de la Rochefoucauld.
Hill, 30 (note); not in Forbes.

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