SAUSSURE (Horace-Bénédict de). Voyages dans les Alpes, précédés d'un essai sur l'histoire naturelle des environs de Genève. Neuchâtel, Samuel Fauche, 1779 [t. I] ; Genève, Barde & Manget, 1786 [t. II] ; Neuchâtel, Louis Fauche-Borel, 1796 [t. III et IV]. 4 volumes in-4, marbled calf, triple fillet, ornate spine, green and red titles, red edges (period binding). First edition of this "seminal work on mountaineering and crucial to our knowledge of the Alps" (Jacques Perret). It is illustrated with 8 vignettes in the text, including 4 on the titles, 2 fold-out maps and 21 plates, most of them fold-outs, engraved on copper by Théodore Bourrit after Saussure's drawings. A philosopher, physicist, botanist, mineralogist and geologist, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799) travelled the Alps for thirty years. In his Voyages, he recounts the many attempts he made to climb Mont Blanc, a feat he achieved on 3 August 1787, one year after the Savoyards Paccard and Balmat. Added at the end of the second volume is a handwritten contemporary copy of 24 pp. of the Lettre de M. de Saussure aux auteurs du Journal de Paris [dated] Genève ce 19 août 1787. Copy of the Countess de Mellet, née Élisabeth-Mélanie Le Daulceur (1746-1793), with her beautiful bookplate engraved by her mother, Louise Le Daulceur, after a drawing by Edmé Bouchardon. This is an undescribed state of the bookplate of "Mde Le Daulceur" (IFF, XIII, n°39), retouched after her marriage to Raphaël-Lucrèce de Fayolle de Mellet, comte de Mellet, in 1763. She was the niece of Étienne Mignot de Montigny. Her books appear to have been confiscated during the Revolution (seizure stamps partially covered over the four titles). From the library of Dr Bernard Blanc (2010, no. 500). Bindings worn, hinge split on volume III, modern green title-piece pastedown on the first cover of each volume. Perret, n°3911 - Regards sur les Alpes, n°19 - Brunet, V, 150 - Lonchamp, n°2615.