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Author: Flammarion, Camille
Title: Les terres du ciel. Voyage astronomique sur les autres mondes et description des conditions actuelles de la vie sur les diverses planetes du systeme solaire
Place Published: Paris
Publisher:Maron et Flammarion
Date Published: 1884
Description:

769 pp. Profusely illustrated with wood-engravings, chromolithographed maps. Also with 2 mounted woodburytypes, measuring 12.7x13.3 cm (5x5½") and 15.9x12.1 cm. (Quarto) 27.3x17.8 cm (10¾x7"), morocco backed red pebbled cloth, embossed front panel, gilt lettered and -decorated spine, all edges gilt.

The Woodburytypes are printed by "E. Bernard et Cie." The first is after an original photograph of the moon by John M. Rutherford, taken in the early 1870's. The second is of a model produced and photographed by James Nasmyth detailing the mountains of the moon. The French astronomer Camille Flammarion (1842-19250 did more to encourage public interest in astronomy than anyone else in his day, authoring more than seventy books. Flammarion "earned the amorous attention of a French countess who died prematurely of tuberculosis. Although they never met, the young woman made an unusual request to her doctor, that when she died he would cut a large piece of skin from her back, bring it to Flammarion and ask that he have it tanned and used to bind a copy of his next book. Flammarion's first copy of Terres du Ciel was bound thus with an inscription on the front cover: 'Pious fulfillment of an anonymous wish/binding in human skin (woman) 1882." - Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy and Spaceflight.

Covers worn, spine sunned and rubbed; some pages browned; very good.