Editing Alexander von Humboldt (section)

==Works==
===''Cosmos''===
{{see also|Cosmos (Humboldt book)}}
[[File:Alexander von Humboldt photo 1857.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Photograph of Humboldt in his later years]]

''[[Cosmos (Humboldt book)|Kosmos]]'' was Humboldt's multi-volume effort in his later years to write a work bringing together all the research from his long career. The writing took shape in [[public lecture|lecture]]s he delivered before the [[Humboldt University of Berlin|University of Berlin]] in the winter of 1827–28. These lectures would form "the [[cartoon]] for the great fresco of the ''[K]osmos''".<ref>Quoted in {{harvnb|Dickinson|Howarth|1933|p=145}}</ref> His 1829 expedition to Russia supplied him with data comparative to his Latin American expedition.{{sfn|Wulf|2015|p=235}}

The first two volumes of the ''Kosmos'' were published between the years 1845 and 1847 and were intended to comprise the entire work, but Humboldt published three more volumes, one of which was posthumous. Humboldt had long aimed to write a comprehensive work about geography and the natural sciences. The work attempted to unify the sciences then known in a Kantian framework. With inspiration from [[German Romanticism]], Humboldt sought to create a compendium of the world's environment.<ref name="Walls 2009 3–15"/> He spent the last decade of his long life—as he called them, his "improbable" years—continuing this work. The third and fourth volumes were published in 1850–58; a fragment of a fifth appeared posthumously in 1862.

His reputation had long since been made with his publications on the Spanish American expedition. There is not a consensus on the importance of ''Kosmos''. One scholar, who stresses the importance of Humboldt's ''Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain'' as essential reading, dismisses ''Kosmos'' as "little more than an academic curiosity".{{sfn|Brading|1991|p=534}} A different opinion is that ''Kosmos'' was his "most influential book".{{sfn|Wulf|2015|p=235}}
[[File:Von Humboldt-4.jpg|alt=First page of the table of contents to volume 1 of "Cosmos," translated by Elise Otté (1849)|thumb|237x237px|First page of the table of contents to volume 1 of "Cosmos," translated by [[Elise Otté]] (1849)]]
As with most of Humboldt's works, ''Kosmos'' was also translated into multiple languages in editions of uneven quality. It was very popular in Britain and America. In 1849 a German newspaper commented that in England two of the three different translations were made by women, "while in Germany most of the men do not understand it".<ref>Supplement to No. 102 of ''[[Allgemeine Zeitung]]'' (Augsburg), 12 April 1849.</ref> The first translation by Augustin Pritchard—published anonymously by Mr. Baillière (volume I in 1845 and volume II in 1848)—suffered from being hurriedly made. In a letter Humboldt said of it: "It will damage my reputation. All the charm of my description is destroyed by an English sounding like Sanskrit."{{citation needed|date=June 2015}}

The other two translations were made by [[Elizabeth Juliana Leeves Sabine]] under the superintendence of her husband Col. [[Edward Sabine]] (4 volumes 1846–1858), and by [[Elise Otté]] (5 volumes 1849–1858, the only complete translation of the 4 German volumes). These three translations were also published in the United States. The numbering of the volumes differs between the German and the English editions. Volume 3 of the German edition corresponds to the volumes 3 and 4 of the English translation, as the German volume appeared in 2 parts in 1850 and 1851. Volume 5 of the German edition was not translated until 1981, again by a woman.<ref>{{Cite book|first=Margarita |last=Bowen|title=Empiricism and Geographical Thought: From Francis Bacon to Alexander von Humboldt|series=Cambridge Geographical Studies (No. 15)|place=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1981|isbn=978-0-521-10559-0}}</ref> Otté's translation benefited from a detailed table of contents, and an index for every volume; of the German edition only volumes 4 and 5 had (extremely short) tables of contents, and the index to the whole work only appeared with volume 5 in 1862. Less well known in Germany is the atlas belonging to the German edition of the Cosmos ''"Berghaus' Physikalischer Atlas"'', better known as the pirated version by Traugott Bromme under the title ''"Atlas zu Alexander von Humboldt's Kosmos"'' (Stuttgart 1861).{{citation needed|date=July 2015}}

In Britain, [[Heinrich Berghaus]] planned to publish together with [[Alexander Keith Johnston (1804–1871)|Alexander Keith Johnston]] a ''"Physical Atlas"''. But later Johnston published it alone under the title ''"The Physical Atlas of Natural Phenomena"''. In Britain its connection to the ''Cosmos'' seems not have been recognized.<ref>all information from Wolf-Dieter Grün: The English editions of the ''Kosmos''. Lecture at ''Alexander von Humboldt. Science in Britain and Germany during his lifetime''. Joint symposium of the Royal Society and the [[German Historical Institute London]], 1 October 1983.</ref>

===Other publications===
[[File:Muisca_cyphers_acc_acosta_humboldt_zerda.svg|upright=1.5|thumb|[[Muisca numerals]] as noted by Humboldt]]
Alexander von Humboldt published prolifically throughout his life. Many works were published originally in French or German, then translated to other languages, sometimes with competing translation editions. Humboldt himself did not keep track of all the various editions.{{sfn|Wulf|2015|p=413}} He wrote specialized works on particular topics of botany, zoology, astronomy, mineralogy, among others, but he also wrote general works that attracted a wide readership, especially his ''Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the years 1799–1804''.<ref>[https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/23548 ''Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of America, during the years 1799–1804/ by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland; translated from the French of Alexander von Humboldt and edited by Thomasina Ross'' (vols 2 & 3)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170904232633/http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/23548 |date=2017-09-04 }}, biodiversitylibrary.org</ref> His ''Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain'' was widely read in Mexico itself, the United States, as well as in Europe.<ref>[https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/85282#page/12/mode/1up ''Political essay on the kingdom of New Spain containing researches relative to the geography of Mexico''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170904203353/http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/85282#page/12/mode/1up |date=2017-09-04 }}, biodiversitylibrary.org</ref>

Many of the original works have been digitally scanned by the Biodiversity Library.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org|title=Biodiversity Heritage Library|website=Biodiversitylibrary.org|access-date=9 April 2018|archive-date=23 February 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110223001438/http://biodiversitylibrary.org/|url-status=live}}</ref> There have been new editions of print works, including his ''Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas'' (2014), which includes reproductions of all the color and black and white plates. In the original edition, the publication was in a large format and quite expensive.{{sfn|Kutzinski|Ette|2012}} There is a 2009 translation of his ''Geography of Plants''<ref>Alexander von Humboldt, ''Geography of Plants'', translated by Sylvie Romanowski. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2009.</ref> and a 2014 English edition of ''Views of Nature''.<ref>Alexander von Humboldt, ''Views of Nature'', Stephen T. Jackson, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2014. {{ISBN|978-022-6923185}}.</ref>