HUMBOLDT, Alexander von (1769-1859). Kosmos. Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung.

HUMBOLDT, Alexander von (1769-1859).  Kosmos. Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung. [Vols. I – IV:] Stuttgart and Tübingen [Vol. V:] Stuttgart: Cotta, 1845-62. 5 text volumes, 4to (215 x 135mm). (Occasional light mainly marginal spotting.) Contemporary black half morocco, spines lettered and decorated in gilt with raised bands (extremities lightly rubbed). Provenance: from the Collection of Peter and Margarethe Braune. FIRST EDITION. Without the “atlas” volume, as often, but with the posthumously published fifth text volume. PMM 320 (calling for “4 vols. text, and atlas”): “Alexander von Humboldt produced in his ‘Cosmos’ one of the last really comprehensive physical surveys ever to be attempted … [It] was Kosmos – ‘The Cosmos, Outline of a Description of the Physical World’ – based on lectures delivered at the Berlin Singakademie in 1828-9, which Humboldt really considered as his life work. The last of the five volumes was published posthumously from his notes. In his own words it was meant ‘to represent in one work the whole material world, everything we know today of the phenomena in the celestial spaces and of life on earth, from the nebulae to the geography of mosses on granite rock … it is meant to describe a chapter in the intellectual development of mankind (the knowledge of nature). The book contains a complete survey of the physical sciences and their relation to each other.” (5)