DU HALDE, Pe. Jean-Baptiste, S.J.- Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et ...

DU HALDE, Pe. Jean-Baptiste, S.J.- Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l’Empire de la Chine...- A Paris: Chez P. G. Lemercier, 1735-1736.- 4 vols.: il.; 42 cm.- E.
Father Du Halde (1674-1743), French Jesuit historian, although he never traveled to the East, had access to numerous letters and reports from Jesuit missionaries of the China Mission, from which he produced his masterpiece which he came to have enormous repercussions in Europe, contributing in a lasting way to the construction of the image that Europeans now have of China and the Chinese. The work addresses a large number of subjects, namely geography, topography, medicine, Confucian religion, porcelain, traditions, agriculture and silk culture, etc. The numerous maps, of great technical rigour, are made by the French cartographer Jean Bourguignon d'Anville and were mostly engraved by Parmentier. Original edition, consisting of four folio volumes, with the following description. Tome premier: [4], VIII, LII, III, [1], 592 p.: 16 foldable maps (alias 15, lacking the map of the second province of Kiang Nan, p. 126), VII prints of 1 p.; Tome second: [4], IV, 725, [1] p.: 10 prints (7 foldable, 2 double, 1 of 1 p.); Tome troisième: [4], IV, 364, [3, 1 br.] p.: 2 plans, 3 prints (alias 2, lacking the foldable print between pages 78 and 79, representing the Jesuit priests Matteo Ricci, Adam Scholl, Ferdinand Verbiest and Paul Siu Colao;Tome quatrième: [4], II, 520 p.: 25 maps (13 double and 12 foldable). The four volumes are very worn and have serious imperfections, namely: generalized wormholes, mostly marginal, sometimes deep, occasionally affecting the text; the engravings are generally clean and the vast majority have no cuts, but some are affected by wormholes, especially marginal ones (a torn and loose map); lack of a map (in tome I) and a stamp (in tome III). In volume III, however, it preserves the appreciated double print that represents the astronomical observatory in Beijing (loose, with marginal wormholes). Brunet, II, 870. Sommervogel, IV, 35. Cordier (Sinica), I, p. 45/48. Cox (Travel), I, p. 355.