Elements of Botany. Part I. Classification. Vol. 1 of 2

Description

~Early dark green cloth boards. Rebacked in near-matching green cloth with replacement printed paper spine label. Mild wear and marking to boards. Board corners slightly pushed in. Endpapers discreetly reinforced at gutters. Royal 8vo (26 x 17 cm). Owner”s inscription to front free endpaper of Alexander George Home, surgeon to the 2nd Dragoon Guards, d. 1875. Frontis. Mild scattered foxing. 91 plates, inc. frontis, most striking botanical illus., 9 carefully hand-coloured. Robert John Thornton (1767-1837), physician and writer on botany. When studying medicine at Cambridge, Thornton was strongly influenced by the botanical lectures of the Rev. Thomas Martyn, who introduced him to Linnaeus”s sexual system for plants and who receives a fulsome 4pp. dedication in this volume. Thornton became lecturer in medical botany at Guy”s Hospital, and in 1799 embarked on the publishing venture which was to secure his place in history and bring him to financial ruin, the New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus, better known by the title of its third volume, The Temple of Flora, a spectacular production into which Thornton poured his personal fortune: ”(t)he twenty-eight illustrations in the Temple of Flora in its large format . . . are the most overtly dramatic in the history of botany” (ODNB). 14 of these plates were after illustrations by Peter Charles Henderson (fl. 1791-1829), who produced almost all the illustrations for ”Elements of Botany”. To offset the costs of the Temple of Flora, Thornton obtained an act of Parliament authorising him to run a lottery, with various editions of his books as prizes, advertised as the ”Royal Botanical Lottery”: ”Only 20,000 Tickets, and Ten Thousand prizes!!! For the Promotion and Encouragement of Science. Under the Patronage of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent” (1811 lottery bill). The two volumes of the ”Elements of Botany” were 6th prize in the lottery, advertised as having 200 plates. Plate counts in surviving copies vary from 136 to 190; this single volume with 91 plates is therefore relatively well-equipped. The Royal Botanical Lottery failed to restore Thornton”s finances and he died in near-penury in 1837. His publications stand, however, as a testament to ”a particular phase of British science in the era of Romanticism”, in which botanical learning was put to wider ”universal human and religious purposes”, with the careful and often magnificent illustrations to Thornton”s works intended to inculcate ”a love of order and proper feelings of awe for divine providence” in his readers (ODNB). ~Robust packaging. Overseas tracking available on request.