Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Oeuvres de Jacques-Henri-Bernardin de Saint-Pierre 2 tomes avec Oeuvres posthumes volume. Paris: Chez Ledentu, 1840. [1409]
Two volume set, leather spine with raised bands, tooling, and gilt rules & titles, maroon pebble cloth boards, plain end papers. 7 x 10 1/4 inches. Vol. I. with frontispiece plate, 786 generally clean pp. with the last few leaves darkly foxed, and 6 additional plates. LXXII. & 651 pp., with scattered dark foxing. Both volumes printed in double columns. Impressive looking volumes. French texts. Good. Hardcover.
Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), French naturalist, novelist, friend of Rousseau.
"His chief work, Études de la nature (1784), sought to prove the existence of God from the wonders of nature; it is rich in descriptive passages, and it added specific color terms and plant names to the French language. A section of this was the sentimental prose idyll Paul et Virginie (1788), which attained immense vogue and influenced the French romanticists." - The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia online.