Bidspirit auction | Brandes, Rudolph; Geiger, Ph. Lorenz;

Brandes, Rudolph; Geiger, Ph. Lorenz; Liebig, Justus – ANNALEN DER PHARMACIE. Lemgo und Heidelberg. Verlag der Meyerschen Hof-Buchhandlung und der Winterschen Universitäts-Buchhandlung. 1832-1834. 10 vols. 21,0 cm x 13,5 cm. B. - Rare assembly of nine volumes from the early issues of the celebrated Annalen der Pharmacie, a scientific publication of capital importance for the history of chemistry and pharmacy, founded in 1832 by the eminent naturalists Justus von Liebig, Philipp Lorenz Geiger and Rudolph Brandes. This periodical journal was born from the merger of Geiger's Magazin für Pharmacie und Experimentalkritik with Brandes' Archiv des Apothekervereins im nördlichen Teutschland, rapidly establishing itself as the most prestigious scientific organ of its time for the dissemination of discoveries in the chemical and pharmaceutical sciences. The present and extremely rare set comprises volumes I to X, thus comprising the first decade of the publication. Justus von Liebig, German chemist of world renown and one of the founders of modern organic chemistry, used these Annalen as a privileged platform to disseminate his revolutionary investigations, including work on organic analysis, the theory of radicals and fermentation processes. The publication counted, from its inception, on contributions from prominent figures of European science, including Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and John Dalton, whose articles appear in these volumes. In 1840, the journal changed its title to Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, and in 1873, after Liebig's death, it became Justus Liebig's Annalen der Chemie, a name it maintained for more than a century as a symbol of excellence in organic chemistry publications. The present collection thus represents the very first years of this seminal publication, the period in which the foundations of modern chemistry were established. The volumes present later binding in half leather over boards covered with marbled paper in dark tones, with spines decorated with false raised bands and gilt tooling. Red leather label on the spine of volume I bearing the indication ”Annalen d. Pharmacie” in gilt letters. The boards show wear compatible with use and age, with abrasions at the extremities and corners, particularly visible in volume I, where partial loss of the marbled paper is observed near the upper edge of the front board. The leather of the spines presents itself in generally good state of preservation, with slight fading of colour and small losses to the head and tail caps. The interior remains in acceptable condition, with endpapers in marbled or plain paper, according to the volume. The title pages present moisture and acid stains characteristic of the period, more pronounced on the first and last pages of each tome. The text block exhibits uniform browning typical of paper from the period, with some scattered foxing, more intense in certain gatherings. Several volumes include folding lithographed plates with scientific diagrams and tables, in good state of preservation. Ex-libris of Bernardo Brissos, applied to the front pastedowns of the volumes, attesting to the provenance of this collection from a Portuguese private library of scientific interest. Work of exceptional rarity in the antiquarian market, above all in a set of this magnitude and relative completeness. The first volumes of the Annalen der Pharmacie are today eagerly sought after by academic institutions and collectors specializing in the history of science, constituting an incontrovertible testament to the nineteenth-century scientific revolution that laid the foundations of contemporary chemistry.