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Guillemin, Amédée; Locyker, [Winifred] (trans.); Lockyer, J. Norman (ed.).
The Forces of Nature A Popular Introduction to the Study of Physical Phenomena.
Publisher: MacMillan and Co., London;
Date of Publication: 1872
Stock Code: 15370
Early English edition (edition not stated), after the French first of 1868. Quarto, pp., xxxix, 679, [1], plus full-colour aquatint frontispiece, 10 full-colour aquatints by R. H. Digeon after paintings by Eugene Etienne Ronjat, Alexandre-Blaise Desgoffe, and others, and 454 black-and-white wood-engraved figures within text, as called for. Publisher’s original blue pebble-grained cloth; titled within elaborate pictorial frame in black and gilt to spine; six vignettes within frames, bordered with fillets and fleurons in black and gilt to upper board; brown end-papers. Light rubbing and fading to spine; the slightest of shelf-wear to edges; toning to edges of boards; a few scuffs to lower board; binding otherwise strong and square. Occasional scattered foxing, particularly to prelims, but generally a bright copy. A magnum opus in nineteenth-century popular science, this superbly illustrated guide to physics introduces readers to optics, thermodynamics, electricity, magnetism, and gravity. The richly coloured aquatints within includes illustrations of the Aurora Borealis; the colour wheel; the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation; and a double rainbow. This English translation includes additional material not present in the French edition. £450.00