St. Petersburg, Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1847-1849. Large 4to (29.5 x 22.6 cm). Two title pages (to Parts I and II-III; 432 pp. [151; 187, 94]; 35 lithographed plates [14; 21]. Blue buckram with gilt lines and title on the spine. Speckled edges.

First comprehensive work on the marine malacofauna of the former Russian Empire, including Siberia and surrounding seas. Well-illustrated and with the inclusion of many new species from remote and poorly studied regions. Written by the Russian explorer and malacologist Alexander Theodor Fedorovich von Middendorff (1815-1894) and published in the academy's Mémoires Volume VI, but these are separate offprints, with new pagination. Provenance: a weak, marginal blind-stamp of the Conchological Society in the plate margins, stamp of the same on the first title, cancelled by a Wheldon & Wesley stamp dated May 1954; and small stamp of the American malacologist and malaco-historian Richard Irwin Johnson (1925-2020). Very rare. We found no auction records. Scattered foxing (as often with Russian books from this period), especially on the first and last leaves, plates generally much cleaner. Cat. BM(NH) p. 1307. Not in Nissen ZBI.