Description de toutes les nations de l'empire de Russie, ou l'on expose leurs moeurs, religions, usages, habitations, habillemens et autres particularites remarquables.

A collection of 90 finely hand-coloured plates published for the Georgi's famous ethnographical work

All captions for the engravings were printed in three languages, so that it could be supplied to the text volumes of any of the three issues: French, German and Russian. The work is divided into the following sections: I. People of the Finnish tribe (25 plates), II. Tatar people (30 plates), III. Samoyed, Manchu and Eastern Siberian people (20 plates).

Johann Gottlieb Georgi (1729-1803) was a German geographer and chemist. In 1770 he studied at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Two years later Georgi went to accompany Peter Simon Pallas, a German zoologist and biologist, on his expedition through Siberia. "He was particularly interested in the region of the Lake Baikal. His description and mapping of this region remained one of the most accurate and significant for several decades. After his return to St. Petersburg Georgi published the observations he made during his trip. It is hard to overestimate Georgi's work. His records provided extensive and accurate ethnographical, economical, botanical and geographical descriptions of the large part of the Russian Empire." (NDB, Neue Deutsche Biographie VI, 242).

Quarto (26.5 x 18.3 cm). 90 numbered plates coloured by hand, Russian, German and French captions in the plate; first plate spotted, small traces of mount to the versos. Later vellum with manuscript score; soiled.