Moeurs et coutumes des peuples...du monde

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HOCQUART, Mme (publisher).

Moeurs et Coutumes des Peuples…

Two volumes, quarto, with 144 handcoloured plates; a very large copy, completely uncut, in a handsome contemporary binding of half crimson roan, flat spines banded and lettered in gilt.

Paris, Madame Veuve Hocquart, 1811-1814.

An Enlightened look at the peoples of the world: costumes, customs and rituals Lavishly illustrated study of the peoples of both old and new worlds, concentrating on ceremonial events and native customs. The spirit behind the work is very much that of the Enlightenment – a tremendous curiosity about newly discovered parts of the world and about human behaviour, particularly for ritualised behaviour evolved in isolation such as native punishments and social rituals. The range of the book is particularly wide for such a comparatively early work, with plates, for instance, of an Iroquois warrior scalping his enemy, the funeral ceremonies of the Natchez in Louisiana, the ‘anthropophages’ of Brazil, or of an Unalaskan man in his kayak (perhaps after John Webber’s original).

The first section, Europe, is dealt with in just 22 of the 144 plates, the other more heavily illustrated sections being Asia, Africa, America and Oceania. This last Pacific section includes images of New Holland, Van Diemens Land, New Zealand and Hawaii. There are two plates depicting Australian scenes: the ‘Mariage de la Nouvelle Hollande’ which depicts a rather violent scene of abduction, and the more bucolic ‘Repas des habitans de la terre de Diemen’, in which a family group fishes next to a river – one man is lowering a clearly defined crab onto a fire. The accompanying four-page description is derived, as a note acknowledges, from the voyages of Cook, Turnbull, Péron and Freycinet, as well as an unnamed edition of George Barrington.

The New Zealand section includes a very fine depiction of a war canoe of great splendour, while a good section on Tahiti and the Friendly Isles is accompanied by no fewer than four plates, one of them a particularly good depiction of the Tahitian Chief Mourner. One of the most interesting plates of the entire work is the last, depicting a scene in Hawaii: ‘Prêtre des Iles Sandwich Tabouam un terrain’, in which a grey-haired priest marks out an area of taboo.

The work was published by the Parisian firm of the widow Hocquart, who had also published an equally rare edition of the work of Grasset de Saint-Sauveur in 1806 (Forbes, 371), as well as an important edition of the works of the physiognomist Lavater. Although not recorded by Ferguson, there are in fact sets at the National Library and the State Library of N.S.W. It is not recorded by Forbes’ Hawaiian bibliography. $15,500 Not in Ferguson; not in Forbes; Rex Nan Kivell Collection, NK 2107.

[4403259 at hordern.com]

First published in 2019 Hordern House Rare Books Level 2, 255 Riley Street Surry Hills Sydney, NSW 2010 Australia PO Box 588, Darlinghurst NSW 1300 Australia Hordern House Rare Books Pty. Ltd. ACN 050 963 669 www.hordern.com rare@hordern.com Telephone: +61 2 9356 4411