Maund - The Botanic Garden Vol. VIII - 1838

A splendid testament to Victorian garden art with finely hand-colored botanical plates and well-founded plant descriptions.

First edition. Publisher: London, Simpkin, Marshall & Co.; Sherwood & Co., circa 1838. 195 pages with engraved title page and 24 (of 24) colored copper plates, late 19th-century half-leather binding, marble paper endpapers, marbled cut, 20 x 16 cm.
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With his monumental series The Botanic Garden, Benjamin Maund created one of the most important English botanical illustration works of the 19th century. The work blends scientific precision with exceptionally finely executed, hand-colored plant representations and documents the great diversity of ornamental plants cultivated in Great Britain at the time. The colored plates impress with their precision and decorative appeal and belong to the finest botanical illustrations of the Victorian era.

Each depicted plant is complemented by an extensive accompanying text that, in addition to the botanical classification, covers origin, history of introduction, flowering period, cultural conditions, and horticultural properties. Thus, a work emerged that is at once a botanical reference, a garden manual, and an artistic illustration collection, vividly reflecting the knowledge of its time.

To this day The Botanic Garden is regarded as one of the loveliest popular-science plant works of its era. The high-quality colored plates make the work equally a valued botanical reference and a coveted collectible for bibliophiles, garden historians, and lovers of historic plant illustrations.

With an armorial ex libris of the Bradshaigh (Bradshaw) family of Haigh Hall, Lancashire, England (first half of the 19th century), from the library of Baronet Roger Hesketh Bradshaigh (1786–1866)
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Binding lightly rubbed and slightly bumped. Paper mostly clean, with occasional light age-toned foxing in places. The hand-colored plates are very fresh and richly colored. Overall a beautiful and decorative copy.