Sold for $65,000 as a Haskell F. Norman book in 1998, it made a profitable return as a Freilich book (Sotheby's New York, January 10 and 11), at $95,000 (£65,515).
Illustrated right, bottom: in contemporary vellum with elaborately gilt and painted neoclassical decoration, this is the
former Hamilton Palace, Abbey and Otto Schäfer copy of William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei. Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies..., 1776. In 1994, at Sotheby’s New York, it made $55,000. This time it made $140,000 (£96,550).
Systême des animaux... and Campi Phlegraei...
Interleaved throughout with blank leaves, 19 of which bear the author’s annotations, this is Jean Baptiste Lamarck’s own copy of his landmark work on the evolution of species, an 1801 first of Systême des animaux sans vertèbres, ou tableau général des classes, des ordres et des genre de ces animaux in a contemporary binding.
