Flora Australasica ; or, a selection of handsome, or curious plants, natives of New Holland, and the South Sea islands…

A$9,500 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Limited edition

London : James Ridgway, 1827-1828. First edition, first issue. Octavo (250 x 160 mm), contemporary half-calf over marbled papered boards (edges slightly rubbed), spine in compartments with raised bands ruled in gilt, contrasting morocco title piece lettered in gilt; front pastedown with armorial bookplate of Charles Scrase Dickins; 56 exquisite hand-coloured engraved plates by S. Watts from drawings by E. D. Smith (the plates not watermarked, but with engraved dates of 1827-28), each with 2 pages of text (the text paper watermarked with the date 1825); a fine copy. The first book to contain illustrations of Australian plants and flowers drawn from living specimens, rather than ones that had been field-collected, dried and pressed. The specimens illustrated were grown from seeds in London nurseries a direct result of the adoption of the methods of Joseph Banks. Sweet s work, with its fine engraved illustrations drawn by botanical artist Edwin Dalton Smith, is the third illustrated book devoted to Australian botany, after those of James Edward Smith (1793) and Ferdinand Bauer (1813). Unlike his two predecessors, however, Sweet was neither a botanical scientist nor botanical illustrator, but a horticulturalist; consequently, what sets his Flora Australasica apart from those two earlier works is the fact that its focus is as much on cultivation as scientific classification. This approach is reflected in Sweet s own remarks on the title page regarding the plants selected for his b

• Binding: Hardcover

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