Thomas Gray's Naturalist's Journal 1767-1771 With a Preface by Robert Lloyd George Edited by Ruth Abbot

£170 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Thomas Gray’s Naturalist’s Journal 1767-1771 is dedicated and presented to members of the Roxburghe Club by the Honourable Robert Lloyd George. The poet and literary scholar Thomas Gray (1716-1771) was also, in his later years, a keen natural historian and for many years he would record his observations in part-printed pocket-books. However, from January 1767 until May 1771, three months before his death on 30 July, he was able to enter up his notes into copies of a more substantial oblong folio pre-printed publication, The Naturalist’s Journal created by the naturalist Daines Barrington. Each page contained printed tables with blank spaces for the date, place, time, aspects of the weather, and observations on the flowering or first appearances of trees and fungi, plants and mosses, birds and insects, fish and other animals, and miscellaneous observations. These spaces could then be completed by hand with any relevant information, as they were by Thomas Gray, albeit selectively rather than comprehensively. Gray’s annotated copies of The Naturalist’s Journal are now in the possession of Robert Lloyd George. For this publication Dr Ruth Abbott of St John’s College, Cambridge, has selected sections of the Journals, each of which is introduced by an explanation of its contents and context. The selections comprise : 1-24 January 1767 [Cambridge], 14 June-12 September 1767 [Tour to Yorkshire], 27 December 1767 - 13 February 1768 [Cambridge], 14 February - 12 March 1768 [Cambridge],

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