hand-coloured plates

Beautifully illustrated first edition with 48 hand-coloured botanical plates, finely bound in green morocco.

Jane Loudon (1807-1858) began writing to support her family after her father's death, publishing books such as the pioneering science fiction novel The Mummy! She met her husband, landscape designer John Caludius Loudon, in 1830 after he reviewed the book favourably and sought the author's acquaintance. Loudon worked closely with her husband on his Gardener's Magazine and accompanied him on tours through England and Scotland, recording his observations of the gardens they visited. To improve her knowledge of plants she also attended lectures by the botanist John Lindley. When the couple's publishing business went into debt, Loudon 'turned again to authorship, and tapped the ready Victorian market for books popularising horticulture, botany, and natural history. Instructions in Gardening for Ladies (1840) was hugely successful; 1,350 copies were sold on the day of publication alone. The Ladies' Flower-Garden of Ornamental Annuals, the first in a much-reprinted series of informative illustrated books, was followed by others about bulbs, greenhouse plants, and perennials' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

First edition; 4to (27.5 x 21 cm), 48 hand-coloured lithographic plates, one with a short repaired tear, contents a little toned with occasional small spots and marks; contemporary green half morocco, spine elaborately gilt in compartments with pomegranate tools, double gilt fillets, green cloth sides, green silk bookmark, binding a little rubbed and scuffed, corners repaired, a very good copy; 272pp.