Tan tree calf binding with black title plates, gilt banding and title on the spine. Gilt decorative edging on the boards. Dimensions are for one volume. Title plate missing on volume III.

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A History of the Earth, and Animated Nature is a fascinating work of natural history. It was first published in 1774 in eight volumes, these volumes brought together a history of the earth with a description of its geographical features and species. Oliver Goldsmith was a novelist, poet and journalist as well as the author of many works of natural history. He is now best known for his 1766 novel, The Vicar of Wakefield.

Full Leather. Condition: Very Good-. First Edition. Please view photographs. A nice copy of this handsome first edition in original leather binding, having sprinkled edges, two spine-labels, gilt fleurons along backstrip, and gilt dentelles. Gilt on labels in very good shape, but some loss of gilt to fleurons and to dentelles. Some shelf wear and some rubbing to covers, some rubbing to corners, several joints and hinges starting but still holding solidly.

Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish writer best known for his works such as The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), The Good-Natur’d Man (1768), The Deserted Village (1770) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771). He is thought by some to have written the classic children’s tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765).

Towards the end of his life, Goldsmith became fascinated with the environment and sought to create a definitive text chronicling biological life on the planet. An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature was known not only for the breadth of information about wildlife of all kinds, but also for its early distinction between the types of sciences. Early in the text Goldsmith carefully delineates the realms of general and material physics, as well as the role of nature and natural law, while speaking dismissively of a Supreme Being. In a main thematic piece that stretches through all eight volumes of the work, Goldsmith, a notable naturalist, exposes serious flaws within the naturalist position; he reveals the loose boundary between the most sensitive of plants and the most stationary and unresponsive of animals, and criticizes the popular notion of a well defined hierarchy in favor of a more loose continuum of sentient life.