Beschreibung
FIRST EDITION 1854. 2 volumes. WITH SIGNED LETTER, see below. Hooker dedicated this work to Charles Darwin. This set is lacking half-titles, errata in Volume 1 and publisher's catalogue. 8vo, approximately 222 x 140 mm, 9 x 5½ inches, 2 folding maps at rear of Volume 1 with a little added hand colouring,12 full page lithographs, 2 coloured and 10 tinted including 1 folding panorama, plus 80 woodcuts in the text, some full page, a red printed plate of the "Dhurma Rajah's Seal" at front of Volume 1. Complete with all plates and maps. Pages: xxvii, [1], 1-408; xii, 1-487, [1], 4 small corrections to text in ink, pages 141,165,187 and 389 (authors hand?) bound in the original publisher's pictorial pebbled cloth, spine relaid on closely matching leather, gilt lettering and blind decoration to spines, gilt picture to upper covers and blind decoration to covers, original printed pastedowns and free endpapers, advertising publisher's books. Uneven fading to upper covers, tiny cloth repair to Volume 1 at head of spine, slight wear to tips of corners with board just showing, tiny repair to inner margin of frontispiece in Volume 2, pale offset to title page of Volume 2, small repair on blank side and pale offset to map of Sikkim, pale foxing to frontispiece in Volume 1 and folding plate, affecting images, plates 9 & 12 have slight foxing in margins just touching images, pale browning affecting the blank side of 2 plates, scattered pale foxing throughout and some pale browning, but most pages clean, inner hinges strengthened by binder covering part of a bookseller's small ticket. A good tight set with a 1 page SIGNED LETTER 1859 tipped onto rear pastedown of Volume 1, written on Kew headed paper to an unidentified recipient with the Kew raised blind stamp in top lefthand corner: 'The curator of our Museum will meet you tomorrow at Stevens. I wish I could have gone but it is quite impossible. The Victoria (amazonica) makes no sign of flowering here or elsewhere that we know of as yet', signed 'Jos. D. Hooker', light browning to letter (see attached image). "The first attempts to grow Victoria Amazonica plant by the German-born explorer Robert Schomburgck in Guyana failed, and in 1846 seeds were sent to Sir William Jackson Hooker at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew where attempts to grow them were also unsuccessful", The Royal Collection Trust. See: J. R. Abbey, Travel in Aquatint and Lithography 1770-1860, page 461, No. 502; Yoshimi Yakushi, Catalogue of Himalayan Literature, pages 191-192, No. H236; Sotheby's, Exploration and Discovery, The Library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching, Part 2, page 179, No. 642. MORE IMAGES ATTACHED TO THIS LISTING, ALL ZOOMABLE, FURTHER IMAGES ON REQUEST. POSTAGE AT COST.
Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 51094
Verkäufer kontaktieren
Diesen Artikel melden
