With explanatory notes by maxwell t masters (1 Ergebnisse)

Paperback. Zustand: Fair. First English edition. First English edition. Slim octavo, pp 33, one engraved plate, age-toned and a little marked throughout, the last two pages a little stained, a later binding of simple plain brown paper. A presentation copy from Maxwell T. Masters to Dr Lindley. This was originally part of The Hartland Library, which was formed by Edwin Sydney Hartland, and was a diverse, but major, collection of herbals, archaeology and anthropology. It was donated to Gloucestershire County Council in 1936, and was eventually dispersed around 2010; the only traces of its origin now are the Gloucestershire library labels and stamp on the front endpaper and a stamp on the verso of the title page. [Of the utmost scarcity. "Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He came to see in the leaf the germ of a plant's metamorphosis - the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms - from the root and stem leaves to the calyx and corolla, to pistil and stamens. With this short book - 123 numbered paragraphs, in the manner of the botanist Linnaeus - Goethe aimed to tell the story of botanical forms in process, to present, in effect, a motion picture of the metamorphosis of plants". Originally published in Germany in 1790, it took 73 years for the first English translation to appear, in the Journal of Botany, British and Foreign. A very small number of reprints of that article were published, mainly for libraries and, as here, for notable botanists.].…