1st edition, 1696 De Rebus a Carolo Gustavo..., Samuel von Pufendorf. All plates present, including the panorama

Samuel von Pufendorf's epic history of King Charles X Gustav's reign and military campaigns, complete with all 115 plates and 12 portraits, including the celebrated panorama of the King's funeral procession, measuring nearly 15 feet in length. This is the first edition, Latin printing of 1696, De Rebus a Carolo... (Nuremberg, Christoph Riegel)

Many of the plates are a combination of map and illustration, or sometimes just a map, which were taken from works by the talented Count Erik Dahlbergh, before being engraved by Germany's remarkable plate engravers.

Commissioned by the Swedish crown, this work documents the official state history of Charles X Gustav's reign, documenting his campaigns. Also, the impressive scale of the engravings was to project a sense of Sweden's wealth upon the rest of Europe.

Provenance -

The title page has a signature of "John Hall". While this is a common name, there is a likelihood that this was the (very) successful 18th-century English businessman in Sweden, John Hall the Elder; John Hall was an exporter/importer, mill owner, etc, who was among the most successful 18th century businessmen in Sweden, building the castle Gunnebo, which was noted to have an ample library.

Bibliographic Details -

Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC) number 2632425; not rare, found in many of the world's finest libraries (Ashmolean, Bodleian, Houghton, etc).

Physical Attributes -

Measures approx. 36.5 x 24 x 10 cm. Leather binding. Spine with six raised bands; five compartments with worn gilt tooling, one compartment with the title and author in gilt on leather label. Blue and white endbands. Folio. Richly illustrated with a frontis, engravings and portraits.

Pages - xvi, 626, 53, [11]

Collation - ()4, )()(4, A-Z4, Aa-Zz4, Aaa-Zzz4, Aaaa-Iiii4, K1, a-h4

"115 plates" explained -

Per the binder's instructions (printed with the book) - 112 numbered plates are listed, and additional plates A and B. There are two "plates" labeled "63" and two labeled "97" (per the binder's list). With 112, plus A and B, plus the second 63 and 97, you are taken to a count of 116. Then we find, as instruction to plate 46, a note that we should simply reference plate 31 (so 46 wasn't printed), which takes us back to a count of 115. This is how bibliographers, booksellers, etc, get to 115 plates.

Although, some collators complicate things and count the literal printed pages of plates, not as they're numbered per the publisher, or referenced to the binder. This seems odd and I didn't do this, but it greatly increases the number of the plates because all the plates are bi-fold, and the fold-out plates have 3 (or 4) leaves, and the long plate has (13?). But sticking to the publisher's numbering (and the binder's instructions) seems simpler and more appropriate to me.

Regarding 12 portraits, there are 10 numbered plates (again, per the instructions to the binder), then 2 additional full-page portraits are found on the introductory leaves (technically, the two are not plates since they're printed within the gathering; they did not have to instruct the binder to bind them because they were already in the text block). The full-page frontis falls into this boat too, being printed within the text-block and not a stand-alone plate to be bound in.

To be clear, this copy does have the 115 plates (including the long one), and 12 portraits, with an additional full-page frontis.

The binder for this copy mostly followed the binding instructions. So that you can simply find all the plates without effort, here are the plates that are not placed per the binder's instructions, with the page they can be found on:

Plate 29 - 136

Plate 30 - 136

Plate 47 - 252

Plate 51 - 255

Plate 57 - 331

Plate 58 - 331

Plate 59 - 331

Plate 80 - 381

Plate 87 - 470

Plate 102 - 566

Plate 107 - 559

Plate 110 - In back board pocket.

Plate 111 - 603

I count 16 plates that fold out to a larger size.

I have made a table detailing where every plate is found, the table will be within the front cover (loose).

Condition -

See pictures. Binding quite worn, with rubbing, edge and corner wear, bumped corners, etc. Front joint starting 2” at top. Spine with some chips at top and bottom, but not entirely chipped (head and tail present). Some loss along spine, very heavy gilt tooling seems to be partially at fault. Some provenance marks (… ducator Risberg) along with strikethroughs on pastedown. Gap at hinge between endpapers and text block.

Text block with some toning, well-thumbed, foxing, occasional dog-eared page, rust spot, page edge tear, corner chip, etc. throughout.

Title page with “John Hall” struck through, “Risberg” and the impression of a library at the bottom (unreadable). Library impression again at bottom of second non-plate leaf. Ink mark on back of Pufendorf plate, ghosted onto facing plate (a half-title like page that is the last leaf of the first gathering). “16” written on plate 16, 56, 96 in graphite. Rough page edge to foldout of 54, no printed area affected (extends past text block). Ink spots between plates 60 and 62 (plates not bound in order, see list). Gatherings around page 509 have light moisture mark at bottom gutter. Final leaf, h4, loose.

Plate 110 (the very long, celebrated plate) loose; a little damage to left edge of the plate and occasional odd fold marks, etc. One fold mark has repairs along the fold. Plate 110 is kept in a very rudimentary fabric folder placed on the pastedown of the rear board. Instructions to binder are rough along edges.