Antoine Risso. Mollusques Cephalopodes vivants observes dans la dans le parage mediterraneen du comte de Nice. Ouvrage posthume. Nice: 1854. Folio, 33 uncolored lithographs after Phil. Geny. 20th-century red cloth, original green paper wrappers bound in. A fine copy of a rare work. The present example has uncolored plates, although the upper wrapper calls for "Planches Coloriees". There are no other copies for sale, and only one other copy is listed as having sold at auction: in original wrappers with the plates hand-colored, inscribed by the author's son (sold for 32,500 Euro). J.R. Bourguignant. Etude Synonymique sur les Mollusques des Alpes Maratimes. Paris: 1861. Octavo. 1 portrait,1 plate. Modern black cloth, original wrappers bound in. Limited to 100 copies. Includes a somewhat inaccurate reference to the first work: mentions only the colored issue and calls for 40 plates (in error). (2).
(RIJO-A65/2)(AL)
Property From the Estate of Richard I Johnson (1925-2020), Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
Mr. Johnson (1925-2020) was a long time Research Associate at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, having started as a volunteer while still in high school. He published his first scientific article in 1941, at the age of 16, beginning his life as a gentleman scholar, an amateur with a worldwide scholarly reputation who produced more than 50 papers about malacology. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II, before returning to Massachusetts and graduating from Harvard in 1951.
Over six decades Johnson assembled perhaps the largest private collection of books and journals on molluscs, including titles seldom found even in research libraries, each volume identified with a discrete stamp of "Richard I. Johnson" to a preliminary leaf. It was one of the great collections of shell books ever assembled.
The first part of his library collection was sold at Bonhams, NY in October, 2020. Litchfield Auctions is pleased to present this second session of works from the collection.