Fauvel, Albert A. — [Author’s Copy] Les séricigènes sauvages de la Chine, with Original Drawings, Watercolors, Silkworm, Cocoon, and Silk Specimens, and Authorial Additions

著者(Author)：Albert A. Fauvel

出版元(Publisher)：E. Leroux (Paris)

刊行年(Publishing Date)：1895

ページ数(Pages)：152, [4]

裝幀(Binding)：Hardcover

コンディション(Condition)：Good

サイズ(Size)：28x22.5cm

A remarkable author’s copy of Fauvel’s pioneering study of wild silkworms in China, extensively augmented and documented by the author himself as a working research exemplar.

The volume preserves Fauvel’s own archival assemblage relating to the publication and reception of the work. At the front are mounted five contemporary press cuttings concerning the book, together with two autograph letters addressed to Fauvel, one from the La Chambre de Commerce de Lyon and another from the Société Nationale d’Acclimatation de France. The original printed wrapper bears Fauvel’s signature, while its verso contains the author’s manuscript notes recording the distribution and presentation of copies. These notes document the printing (500 copies, of which 200 taken by the French Ministry of the Interior), the author’s receipt of copies from printer, binder, and publisher in 1895, and his having one copy bound for himself in April 1896. They further list presentation copies sent to leading scholars and institutions.

The text is further enriched with seventeen original drawings by Fauvel inserted throughout the work, comprising seven pen-and-ink illustrations and ten watercolours (one partially defective). An additional leaf carries mounted biological specimens—four cocoons and two silkworm larvae—preserved as material reference samples. The final portion of the volume contains extensive autograph annotations, pasted extracts, and related printed ephemera assembled by the author in connection with his research.

Also preserved are nineteen mounted silk specimens, providing a unique material complement to the study and directly illustrating the economic and sericultural significance of the species discussed.

Altogether, this constitutes an exceptional author-assembled documentary and specimen copy, combining publication history, correspondence, original scientific illustration, field material, and later research notes. Such integrated authorial archives of nineteenth-century sericultural research are of the greatest rarity.

Albert A. Fauvel (1836–1909) was a French missionary, naturalist, and entomological observer active in China in the late nineteenth century. Based for many years in treaty-port China, he devoted particular attention to economically important insects and the sericultural resources of the country. His studies of wild silkworm species and indigenous silk production represent some of the earliest European scientific documentation of non-domesticated sericulture in China.