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Author: Banks, Joseph, Daniel Charles Solander and Sydney Parkinson
Title: Banks' Florilegium: A Publication in Thirty-four Parts of Seven Hundred and Thirty-eight Copperplate Engravings of Plants Collected on Captain James Cook's First Voyage Round the World in H.M.S. Endeavour, 1768-1771
Place Published: London
Publisher:Alecto Historical Editions in association with the British Museum
Date Published: 1980-1990
Description:

28 Copperplate engravings of 743. Colored à la poupée in up to 17 colors. 56x72 cm (22x28¼") or vice versa for portrait format. Title leaves for Parts IX, XXXII, and XXVIII included. Engravings, tipped into labeled folders; folders loose as issued in publisher's cloth-backed portfolios, all housed in 2 original green cloth solander boxes with printed paper labels, Individual plates are from different sets both within the numbered edition and the numbered hors de commerce sets.

Upon his return to London in 1771, after the first voyage aboard Captain Cook's Endeavor, ship's naturalist Joseph Banks determined to publish a grand scientific record of his botanical collection. By 1784 all of the plates had been completed but, for a variety of reasons, Banks delayed publication. The engravings were printed from the original copper plates and colored for the first time between 1980 and 1990 by Alecto Historical Editions, in association with the British Museum (Natural History).

Two plates (#284 & 285) are presented matted, one mounted, lacking the matte, with label detached (#614). Portfolios and Solander boxes are not directly matched with plates present in this lot. Portfolios present are labeled Plates 15-22, Plates 210-217, and Plates 585-591; Solander boxes are labeled Part I Australia Plates 1-22 and Part IX Australia Plates 181-202. Included are plates: 23, 79, 136, 246, 265, 267, 284, 285, 294, 307, 308, 310, 324, 603, 607, 614, 619, 622, 623, 632, 633, 643, 646, 648, 686, 690, 710, and 718.

Over thirteen years after his return to London, while Daniel Solander prepared the accompanying botanical texts, Joseph Banks employed five artists to complete the field sketches drawn on board ship from the fresh specimens by Sydney Parkinson, and eighteen engravers to create exquisite copper plate line engravings from the drawings. All of the plants included for publication were new to European botany.



On his death in 1820, having served as President of the Royal Society for forty years and recognized as the great panjandrum of European science, Banks bequeathed his library and herbarium, together with the Florilegium plates, to the British Museum. A hundred and sixty years later the unpublished plates were to be found, encased in their eighteenth century wrappers, in a cupboard in the Botany Library of the Natural History Museum in London.Due to the size and/or weight of this lot extra shipping and/or handling charges may apply.

Light wear to boxes, portfolios, and some folders; plates fine, or nearly so.