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Lot 133C

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WARNER, Robert (1814?-1896) and Benjamin Samuel W

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London: John Edward Taylor for Lovell Reeve & Co., 1862[-1865]. Folio (433 x 317 mm). 40 hand-coloured lithographed plates by and after W.H. Fitch (31) or James Andrews (9), printed by Vincent Brooks (37) or W.West (3), mounted on cloth guards throughout. Recent dark green half morocco over blue/green cloth-covered boards, spine gilt in six compartments with raised bands, lettered in gilt in the second and third compartment, the others with an overall repeat pattern. Condition: tears to inner blank margin of dedication leaf, and repaired tear to inner blank margin of text leaf to first plate, some general light browning to margins. Provenance: Lynn Abbott Trust. first edition of the first series of one of the most beautiful of all the large-format works on orchid species. The aims of the authors are laid out in the introduction: the huge expansion in the number of varieties of orchid reaching the temperate regions meant that a process of selection was required to bring to the attention of the amateur enthusiast the "new and beautiful varieties of the more ornamental of the species already known ... [as well as] new ones which outvie the most lovely of those of the olden time". With this in mind, as well as the fact that a large scale folio work was necessary to do justice to the genus, they undertook the publishing of a work that was "designed to present to the lovers of orchids with portraits of ... the most beautiful ... among the cultivated forms of this remarkable race of plants." (Introduction). The majority of these 'portraits' are the work of Walter Hood Fitch (1817-1892): "the most outstanding botanical artist of his day in Europe" (Blunt & Stearn The Art of Botanical Illustration [1994] p.265). The success of the enterprise was such that, at the end of the introduction, the publishers were able to announce the preparations for a second series were under way. In the event the work was eventually expanded to three volumes, with the final series being completed in 1891. Cf. BM (NH) V,p.2266; cf. Great Flower Books (1990) p.149; cf. J.Lewis Walter Hood Fitch p.32; cf. Nissen BBI 2108.

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