Figures of the Most Beautiful, Useful and Uncommon Plants Described in the Gardeners Dictionary,

£12,500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

First edition. A lovely copy of one of the most decorative botanical works of the eighteenth century. Born in south-east London, Miller was chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden from 1722 until he was pressured to retire shortly before his death. According to the botanist Peter Collinson, who visited the physic garden in July 1764 and recorded his observation in his commonplace books, Miller 'has raised the reputation of the Chelsea Garden so much that it excels all the gardens of Europe for its amazing variety of plants of all orders and classes and from all climates...' Miller corresponded with other botanists, and obtained plants from all over the world, many of which he cultivated for the first time in England and is credited as their introducer. His knowledge of living plants, for which he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, was unsurpassed in breadth in his lifetime. The Figures was intended as an accompaniment to Miller's The Gardeners Dictionary. This was one of the most popular gardening books of its time, affordable to a wide range of people because Miller kept the cost down by not including many illustrations. In the Figures Miller provided a most luxurious set of plates including a selection by Georg Dioysius Ehret, the greatest flower painter of the eighteenth century. It provides a superb record of plants in cultivation at the time, some very rare. This copy belonged to Professor John Hutton Balfour (1808–1884), a prominent Scottish botanist who ser

• Binding: Hardcover

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