DAPPER (Olfert). Description de l'Afrique, contenant les noms, la situation et les confins de toutes ses parties, et leurs animaux, les mœurs, les coutumes, la langue, les richesses, la religion et le gouvernement de ses peuples. Amsterdam, Wolfgang, Waesberge, Boom and van Someren, 1686. In-folio, brown calf, spine decorated, spotted edges (period binding). First French edition of this very important work on the African continent, translated from Dutch on the Dutch editions of 1668 and 1676. Sumptuously engraved intaglio illustration, including a title-frontispiece, a large fold-out map of Africa, 28 plates and 14 double-page out-of-text maps and 55 figures in the text. Dutch physician and geographer Olfert Dapper (1636-1689) wrote numerous works describing Africa, China, Persia and Georgia, Arabia, etc., apparently without ever having left the Netherlands. The plates in his works, which were accurate and extremely well executed, ensured that his work became very well known. The Description de l'Afrique is his best-known work. Although some of the data must be examined with caution, it is still a fundamental source for Africanists today. From the library of P.-L. Jacops d'Hailly, an interesting provenance from Lille of the period, with engraved and handwritten bookplate. Pierre-Louis Jacops d'Hailly (1669-1738), who was for a long time a counsellor-secretary to the king in the chancellery of the Parliament of Flanders in Tournai, wrote accounts of his travels in Picardy, the Netherlands, Flanders, Hainaut and Artois and Notes sur les villages de la châtellenie de Lille, preserved in manuscript form in the Bibliothèque municipale de Lille. Covers and corners restored, some foxing, one engraving detached.