LA MÉNAGERIE ROYALE, ou Collection de près de 300 Figures représentant tous les Quadrupèdes ou les Animaux les plus curieux des quatre parties de monde, classés par genres, avec la description de leur caractère, de leurs mœurs, des pays qu'ils habitent, etc.; suivie d'Anecdotes curieuses qui les caractérisent; ouvrage instructif et amusant pour tous les ages, et surtout pour la jeunesse.

First edition published under this title, second overall. Four volumes. Sextodecimo (130 x 96mm). Publisher's original pink coated-paper boards with titles and volume numbers in gilt to the spines. Page edges untrimmed. Housed in a later pink handmade paper-covered card slipcase. Illustrated with 107 hand-coloured engraved plates, including a frontispiece depicting visitors to the Menagerie to the first volume. A near fine set, the bindings firm with light rubbing to the boards, sunning to the spines and some wear to the extremities. The contents, with a corner missing to the front free endpaper of volume two (appears to be an original paper flaw) and some occasional light foxing are otherwise in excellent order and clean throughout. The plates remain bright and fresh. A superb set.

A most attractive embodiment of the early nineteenth-century endeavour to transform royal and imperial ménageries, displays of power and authority, into the first zoological gardens. This formative period for the modern zoo was partly linked to the ongoing development of scientific zoological study, but was also, as is so wonderfully demonstrated by the present set, an attempt to educate and entertain the general population, democratising a formally exclusive arena of knowledge and spectacle. This work was first published in 1812 under Napoleon's reign as Emperor and was thus titled "La Ménagerie Impériale". Following his abdication in 1814, and his succession by King Louis XVIII, the publisher, Saintin, was prompted to reissue the same book, with identical text and illustrations and in the same exact format, but under the new title "La Ménagerie Royale". He even recycled the pages from the previous edition in the binding of this one, as revealed by the somewhat see-through endpapers. A rare and entirely original set of a charming French popular natural history, especially desirable with contemporary colouring. Not listed in Copac, nor at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, OCLC only lists three copies of the "Impériale" edition. [Huzard 4010]. Provenance: pencil ownership inscriptions of Euphémie and Esther Courtois to versos of front free endpapers, one dated "38", possibly pointing to a contemporary family living near Guiscard in the Oise department, north of Paris.