A Selection of Hexandrian Plants Belonging to the Natural Orders Amaryllidæ and Liliacæ From Drawings by Mrs. Edward Bury, Liverpool. Engraved by R. Havell. This Work is most respectfully dedicated To Her Royal Highness Princess Victoria by her Obedient humble Servant. Rob.t Havell
EX-COLL. HENRY ROGERS BROUGHTON, 2nd BARON FAIRHAVEN
London: Robert Havell, 1831. First and only edition.
Folio (24 9/16” x 18 ¾”, 624mm x 474mm): 55 leaves, [4] (preface, blank, subscriber list, blank) foll. 1–51 (51 specimen descriptions, each with a blank verso) [4] (index, blank, systematic index, blank). With an engraved title-page and 51 aquatint engraved plates, finished in color by hand.
Bound in half red morocco over red cloth, bordered with a gilt fillet. On the spine, 5 raised bands. Title and author gilt to the second panel, date gilt to the heel. Top edge of the text-block gilt, others untrimmed.
Boards flexed. Oil stain and scratches to the front board, scuffing and scratches to the rear board. Flyleaf creased. Pale foxing to the letterpress leaves and light offsetting to the plates. Title of plate 19, Amaryllis Aulica, pasted in. Foliation of accompanying text leaf printed as “17” and corrected in graphite. Armorial bookplate of Henry Rogers Broughton to the front pastedown.
Just East of Liverpool, Priscilla Bury (née Falkner, 1799–1872) came of age in a lavishly maintained estate complete with a lush garden and a greenhouse of rare and exotic plants. A talented artist, Bury took to illustrating the flowers kept at her family home, with a particular affection towards bulbous blooms. At 30 years old, Bury had executed enough paintings to warrant a publication, which her friend and noted ornithologist, William Swainson, promoted. She modelled her proposed book on William Roscoe’s Monandrian Plants of the order Scitamineae (1824–1828), even borrowing his prospectus, in which she advertised “drawings of Liliaceous Plants arranged by Botanists in the genera Crinum, Amaryllis, Pancratium” to be released in ten livraisons, each costing one guinea and including 5 plates per part. Among her meager 79 subscribers was John James Audubon, who was working concurrently on his behemoth project, Birds of America, with Robert Havell (1792–1878), their shared engraver.
Of Havell’s skill in adapting Bury’s paintings to print (many of which are handled by Arader) Tomasi attests, “[Havell] managed to translate the artist’s fine watercolours into aquatints of even more striking beauty.” Bibliographers doubt that the limitation far exceeded the number of subscribers — “opus splendidissimum, paucis impressum exemplaribus prodiit” (Pritzel) — making the publication exceedingly rare and increasingly sought after following recognition of Bury’s refined artistry.
Bury would go on to contribute eight paintings to Maund and Henslow’s The Botanist and, in 1862, she would self-publish a monograph of Radiolaria titled Figures of Remarkable Forms of Polycystins, or Allied Organisms, in the Barbados Chalk Deposit…Drawn by Mrs. Bury, as Seen in Her Microscope. The figures were based on samples collected by Dr. John Davy and constituted a groundbreaking work of microscopy. Today, biologists recognize her illustrations as the first pictorial work dedicated to planktonic organisms (a term that would not be coined for another quarter century).
Henry Rogers Broughton (1900–1973), second baron, was the brother of the first Baron Fairhaven (Urban Huttleston Rogers Broughton), a title created for their father, Urban Hanlon Broughton, who died before it could be bestowed upon him. Their mother was the heiress of Henry H. Rogers, the stupendously wealthy oil magnate who became a senior executive of Standard Oil. Armed with their grandfather’s American fortune, the Broughtons were able to buy and to maintain Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire. The second Baron Fairhaven amassed[1] one of the great collections of natural history books and art (partly donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge). The present volume was bought from the second part of his epochal sale at Sotheby’s London (29 November 2022, lot 287).
Nissen BBI 306; Pritzel 1403; Stafleu TL1 937; Tomasi Oak Spring Flora 86
Cataloged by G.R. Murdock
Item #GRM0065
Price: $195,000