(Language of Flowers)(CORTAMBERT, Louise) LA TOUR, Charlotte de (pseud.).   LE LANGAGE DES FLEURS.         Paris: Audot, n.d.   (1819).          First edition. Louise Cortambert's LE LANGAGE DES FLEURS is popularly regarded as the first Western book on the language of flowers. Although there were, in fact, earlier works on floral symbolism and flower-based languages, Cortambert's was by far the most popular and became the source for many, if not most, of the numerous later works on the same subject. It was published in 1819 under the pseudonym of Charlotte de Latour, and its true authorship remained unsettled for many years. "The illustrations to Le Langage des Fleurs constitute one of the chief sources of its charm. The original drawings were prepared by a floral artist of considerable renown, Pancrace Bessa," (Lucia Tomasi, AN OAK SPRING FLORA, pg. 366). Bessa was a student of Redouté and achieved a reputation as the foremost painter of miniature botanical illustrations in his day. These hand-colored plates - a frontispiece and one plate for each month of the year - depict from one to three individual flowers above engraved captions giving their name and associated sentiment or virtue. The text is arranged by seasons. Sections for each month of the year are further divided into chapters devoted to the appropriate flowers, their lore and meaning. There is also a dictionary of the language of flowers and a table of floral attributes for each hour of the day. The work went through several editions, some with the same illustrations, but the quality of the hand coloring in the original edition is noticeably superior. Rare. OCLC locates only three copies.   12mo in 6s (13.3 x 8 cm); xvi + 299 pp. + engraved title with hand-colored vignette + 14 hand-colored plates (including frontispiece).   Nissen 1143; Oak Spring Flora 97 (1833 edition).          Recent quarter-calf with marbled boards; edges marbled; a fine clean copy. $800.00

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