1830s ILLUSTRATED TRAVELS to MICRONESIA SWEDEN NORWAY GREECE antique 3 VOLUMES

Domeny de Rienzi, G.

Oceanien oder Der funfte Welttheil.

Stuttgart, Schweizerbart ; 1837

(Oceania or The Fifth World)

1.

Das Malaienland. Mikronesien.

(Malayland. Micronesia)

With 84 steel-engraved plates and 2 folding maps.

IV, 352 pp. 

Endpaper and title page with cut down right margin

Lot includes:

2.
Pouqueville, F

Griechenland. Europa

(Greece. Europe)

Stuttgart, Schweizerbart ; 1836

With 112 steel-engraved plates and 2 folding maps.

VI, 510 pp.



Includes:

3.

Lebas, (P.)

Schweden und Norwegen. Europa

(Sweden and Norway. Europe)

Stuttgart, Schweizerbart ; 1839

With 60 steel-engraved plates and 1 folding map.

VIII, 678 pp.

Modern calfskin, spine with raised bands and title in gilt

Foxing.

Size: 5.5 by 8.5 inches

TOTAL 3 VOLUMES

 Text in German
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Louis Gabriel Domeny de Rienzi (1789-1843) was a French traveler.
In August 1831, he returned to Paris where he became known to the Geographical Society and the Asian Society of Paris and Bombay, through polemics with Champollion.
A member of the Academy of France and Italy, the Historical Institute of France, and the Universal Statistics Society, he studied hieroglyphics and cuneiform inscriptions from Rome, Armenia, and Syria.

In 1833, he sent a memorandum to the Ministry of the Navy advocating the development of a French policy in the Pacific. He was thus one of the promoters of the Oceanian lobby in France.

The publisher Firmin Didot hired him in 1834 to write the volumes devoted to Oceania for his collection L'Univers.
Rienzi then asked Jules Dumont d'Urville to take care of the Polynesia section, but the latter declined the offer and wrote to him that he judged him, based on the discussions they had had, as suitable as he was for the job.

The three-volume work was published in 1836-1837 under the title Oceania or the Fifth Part of the World, Geographical and Ethnographic Review of Malaysia, Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia, accompanied by three hundred lithographs by the author.
It is a compilation of the voyages of Cook and Bougainville, supplemented by those of Rienzi himself.

Numa Broc wrote: "[...] a fairly successful compilation [...].

The work, like all those in the L'Univers collection, gives more space to history than to geography.
While exotic flora and fauna are not neglected, the author is mainly interested in the customs of the natives...".

A reference work for several decades, despite some dated facts such as the proposal to call Australians pithecomorphs (men with ape-like forms), Oceania has been translated into several languages such as Italian and German and was completely reprinted in 1872.
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