VOM KRIEGE. [On War]

N: N, N. Hinterlassene Werke des Generals Carl von Clausewitz [Works left behind by General Carl Von Clausewitz]. Text in German. Three volumes, totalling over 1,200 pages, a couple of small diagrams; post 8vo; contemporary dark brown skiver leather spines, decorated in gilt, with gilt lettered and decorated green morocco title labels, dark brown papered boards patterned to resemble marbled calf, a trifle rubbed, the spines and fore-corners of boards neatly repaired, lower board of third volume slightly creased; all edges green; endpapers slightly offset, short closed tear to fore-edge margin pp. 53/4 in first volume, a few faint water stains to fore-edge of leaves in same, occasional light foxing; Ferdinand Dummler, Berlin, 1832-4. First edition. *The seminal treatise on military strategy and philosophy, being the first three volumes of Clausewitz's collected works. Most recently from the collection of David Levine (although with no ownership marks). The early ink stamps of the Erstes Koniglich Sachsisches Jager-Bataillon [First Royal Saxon Jager Battalion] are on each title page, and the slightly earlier [contemporary?] stamps and markings of the Bibliothek der leichten Infanterie Halb-Brigade [Library of the Light Infantry Half-Brigade] are on the upper endpapers and title page. Clausewitz (1780-1831) 'took an active part in all the continental campaigns between 1793 and 1815. . . . From 1818 to 1830 [he]was head of the Berlin military academy, the forerunner of the Prussian general staff. His book Vom Kriege grew out of a series of "aphorisms" jotted down in 1816-18 which formed the basis of his lectures at the academy. After his death from cholera during the Polish campaign, in which he served as chief of staff to Gneisenau, who succumbed to the same disease, the book was published by his widow and won immediate recognition as the most profound exposition of the philosophy of war - a place that has never been disputed' [Printing and the Mind of Man 297].