Collectif éditorial - La Belgique pittoresque - 1834

An extremely rare description of Belgium just after the Dutch period. Wear does not diminish the unique content of the book.

Editorial Collective - The Picturesque Belgium: "History, Geography, Topography, natural history, Manners, Customs, Industry, Commerce, Fine Arts, Biographies, Statistics.", "A work adorned with thirty-two views, and Monuments, Vignettes, and Engravings, of a general map of Belgium and maps of the nine provinces." - Brussels, At the Central Subscriptions Office and at the Librairie Moderne, 1834 - 1st edition - 423+2 pages. - Hardcover binding: half-leather with leather corners, boards, endpapers and marbled edges, spine decorated with a gold title, engravings printed on high-quality white paper. – 21x27 cm – Condition: fair to good. Signs of wear and use on the cover, damage to the marbled edges, absence of a corner protection (others show signs of wear), endpapers and half-title firmly bound to the binding, title page and pages up to page 8 inclusive detached from the body of the book (pages show light tears and creases, but complete content), nineteenth-century ink blotch (!) on the outer margin of the first 20 pages (text area intact), handwritten ownership note on the title page (1864), folding maps of the provinces of Hainaut and Namur are missing, with foxing throughout the body (tanin).
* Observe the general map of Belgium: the province of Limburg had not yet been split into Belgian and Dutch provinces. Consequently, the towns of Venlo, Weert, Roermond and Maastricht were part of Belgium in 1834, while Rolduc — the little seminary of the Liège diocese — lay beyond the border. Likewise, the towns of Eupen, Malmedy and Sankt Vith were outside Belgium’s 1834 borders.

Shipment: well packed/insured.