---
title: "Alexander von Humboldt"
chunk: 13/18
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

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". 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."
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. 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).
In Britain, Heinrich Berghaus planned to publish together with 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.

=== Other publications ===

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. 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. His Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain was widely read in Mexico itself, the United States, as well as in Europe.
Many of the original works have been digitally scanned by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. 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. There is a 2009 translation of his Geography of Plants and a 2014 English edition of Views of Nature.

== Influence on scientists and artists ==