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Lot 112C

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MILLER, John Frederick (1715-?1790, neé Johann Se

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London: published and Sold by the Author, [1770-]1777. Folio (527 x 355mm). 1p. letterpress subscriber's list, aprallel preface and text printed in two columns in Latin and English (the final leaf of text folded along the bottom edge). Engraved emblematic frontispiece, engraved title, 4 hand-colored engraved plates of leaf shapes, 104 FINE ENGRAVED PLATES BY MILLER, ALL PRESENT IN TWO STATES: printed before letters in brown, hand-colored and heightened with gum arabic; printed in black with letters and uncolored, with a duplicate leaf of description to the 92nd plate "Classis XXII Ordo IX ... Kiggelaria". Bound to style by the Studio Bindery of Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey, England, in speckled calf, the covers panelled in blind with onlaid light brown speckled panel surrounding a central area cross-hatched in blind, spine in six compartments with raised bands, the bands highlighted by tooling in gilt and blind, red morocco lettering-piece in the second compartment, the others with simple repeat decoration of a centrally-placed flower-spray tool, marbled endpapers. Condition: frontispiece somewhat spotted and with early strengthening to inner blank margin, the 2nd and 76th colored plates with slight flaking of the green pigmentation, occasional offsetting from the uncolored plates onto the facing text leaves, heavier to the 45th, 62nd and 96th plates. Provenance: Lynn Abbott Trust. a fine copy of the first edition of an "immense work of botany wherein ... miller illustrated, in a style of unprecedented elegance, the sexual system of linnaeus" (j.c. lettsom "memoirs of john fothergill" [1789] p.106). Linnaeus himself was fulsome in his praise Miller's work: in a letter of 25 July 1775 he described the sample plates he had been sent as "pulchiores et accuratiores quam ullae quas vidit mundus a condito orbe" [more beautiful and accurate than any seen since the beginning of the world]. Johann Sebastian Mueller was born in Nürnberg but moved permanently to England in 1744, changing his name to Miller. For the present work, he worked chiefly from specimens in the garden of John Fothergill at Upton in Essex, England, and it was a friend of Fothergill's, Gowan Knight (1713-1772), who oversaw the accuracy of the botanical aspects of the plates. The work appeared in twenty parts between 1770 and 1777 to 85 subscribers (who ordered 105 sets). BM (NH) III, p.1370; Bradley Bibliography I, p.258; Dunthorne 206; Great Flower Books (1990); Henrey III, 1153; Nissen BBI 1372; Soulsby 667; Stafleu & Cowan 6482.

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