Sarah Mary Fitton - Conversations on Botany - 1840

Conversations on Botany.....With Plates. 1840

Anonymous, but by Sarah Mary Fitton, aided by Elizabeth Fitton.

Ninth edition.

Thick 2mo, pp xvi, 285, + 32 page publisher's catalogue dated October 1845. Very firm internally, a little offsetting of plate image onto text, with 22 plain engraved plates which have varying amounts of foxing or blemishing (please see our images), a contemporary signature on the front endpaper - Miss Venables, February 1848 - and the very attractive bookplate of C.J. Peacock.
Original cloth with just very slight signs of use.

The plates are by James de Carle Sowerby. Most editions have them coloured, but this uncoloured copy really shows the quality of the engraving very well.

[Sarah Fitton was an Irish writer who co-authored, with her sister Elizabeth, the highly popular 'Conversations on Botany'. She eventually seems to have become a governess in Paris, and indeed died there in 1874.]

[Ann Shteir devotes over three pages to the Fittons in "Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science".]}