Lot 135C email save

WIRT, Elizabeth Washington (1784-1857). Flora's D

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Baltimore: Fielding Lucas jnr., [1837]. 4to (253 x 200 mm). Letterpress title and text printed within decorative borders on paper stock of various different colors (green, yellow, pink, blue, cream). Hand-colored lithographic additional title, presentation leaf, and 56 hand-colored lithographic plates after Ann Smith. Contemporary red morocco, covers tooled in gilt and blind, spine gilt, gilt turn-ins, violet patterened endpapers, g.e. Condition: light generally unobtrusive staining to the lower blank margins of some leaves; light scuffing to extremities. Provenance: Lynn Abbott Trust. the de luxe issue of this early 19th-century bestseller, illustrated with charming plates. The present work is based on Elizabeth Wirt's manuscript of favorite quotations about flowers, which was first published anonymously as Flora's Dictionary in 1829. Later editions (such as the present example) identified the author as 'Mrs. E. W. Wirt of Virginia', and were available in various forms. An 1855 publisher's broadside in the University of Virginia collection (R.O. Hummel Southeastern Broadsides 4405) makes clear that there were three issues of the 1855 edition available, with increasing numbers of plates: the present edition also seems to have been available in offered in various guises (a bookseller recently offered a copy with seven plates), the present probably being the most luxurious. Bennett p.115; McGrath p.36; Reese Stamped with a National Character 52; cf. Sabin 104868.

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