1816 Salomon Gessner The Death of Abel
1816 Salomon Gessner The Death of Abel
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Gessner was not a minor figure. The Swiss writer, painter, and etcher published Der Tod Abels in Zürich in 1758, and within years it had crossed every European border that mattered, moving through French, English, Dutch, and Italian editions with a readership that found in it something the period craved: scripture rendered not as doctrine but as feeling. His retelling of the Genesis episode is a sentimental moral narrative, intimate in scale, centered on innocence and grief and the terrible logic of Cain's act. Britannica places him squarely at the center of literary rococo, and that is exactly right. He wrote for readers who wanted the biblical past to be emotionally inhabitable, not merely reverenced.
This London printing, issued in 1816 by W. Simpkin and R. Marshall of Stationers' Court, comes at an interesting late moment in the book's long English life. By then, the translation associated with Mary Collyer had already carried the text through many editions, and the continued reprinting in small, giftable, gilt-decorated formats tells you something about who was reading it and how it was being used. This was devotional and domestic reading, the kind of book that sat on a writing table or traveled in a coat pocket, that was given as a thoughtful gift or inscribed for a daughter.
The leather binding is sound and holding well, with light rubbing and softening to the extremities consistent with age and handling. The gilt panel borders to both boards remain legible and attractive. The spine gilt is present and the label intact and readable. Marbled endpapers are bright and unobscured. The text block is tight. The early ownership inscription to the front flyleaf is in old ink and shows moderate fading. The engraved frontispiece is present and clear. A solid and appealing copy of a pocket-format book that has survived its two centuries in honest, displayable condition.
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