botany

First edition. A rare local Somerset flora which exemplifies the essential botanical recording work done by women of the period, who, like Mrs Lainson, preferred to remain largely anonymous. Though wide-ranging, descriptive and precise, especially regarding habitat, she wrote in her preface: ‘It makes no pretension to be scientific; nor is it framed after any formal rule:—the idea has been to provide a little manual of what may be observed during a walk of not exceeding two or three hours. The compiler does not presume to call herself a Botanist...’ The common names of the plants, shrubs, trees and sedges given in the text are supplemented by a Latin glossary at the end. Cleveden is a seaside parish on the Severn Estuary, and the plants recorded include some interesting marsh and coastal species. Among rarer flowers is found the orchid known as Ladies Tresses (Spiranthes spiralis), referred to by Mrs Lainson as ‘Common Ladies Tresses’ but now scarce.
Mrs Lainson previously published some local plant lists in the Clevedon Mercury (April 29 and Dec. 21, 1876) under the pseudonym of ‘Lily Grey’ and her botanical collections were given to the University of Bristol and her mosses are in the museum at Weston-super-Mare. Green, Bibliotheca Somersetiensis, vol. 3, p. 1.

Second (expanded) edition (first 1815) of this charming juvenile title: an imitation of The Butterfly's Ball in which an array of personified garden and wild plants gather in celebration. The attractive plates were formerly sometimes attributed to William Blake, and while one can see why, there is probably no connection (Bentley, Blake Collection, Sale Catalogues, 196). The preface indicates that the section of botanical explanations (quite copious) has been revised and enlarged for this second edition.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘As you like it’, Act II, Scene 7:

‘Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly.
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Primroses illustrating ‘Twelfth Night’, Act 3, scene 1:

‘Cesario, by the Roses of the Spring,
By maidenhood, honour, truth and every thing,
I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating Ophelia’s ‘mad speech’ in Hamlet:

‘There’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love,
remember. And there is Pansies, that’s for thoughts.
... There’s Fennel for you, and Columbines. There’s Rue for you,
and here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays.
O, you must wear your Rue with a difference! There’s a Daisy. I
would give you some Violets, but they wither’d all when my father
died’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Act II, scene 1 (she incorrectly gives ‘scene 2’), Titania’s speech:

The seasons alter; hoary headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the Crimson Rose,
And on old Hyems' chin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet Summer Buds
Is, as in mockery, set.’

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Honeysuckle illustrating ‘Much ado about Nothing’, Act III, scene 1, in Leonato’s garden:

‘Bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where Honeysuckles, ripen’d by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter, like favourites,
Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
Against that power that bred it.’

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Lilies and a moss rose, illustrating King John, Act IV, scene 2:

‘But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,
Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:
Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with Lilies boast,
And with the half-blown Rose’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘A Winters Tale’, Act IV, scene 3:

‘Here’s flowers for you!
Hot Lavender, Mints, Savory, Marjoram;
The Marigold, that goes to bed with the sun
And with him rises weeping’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Samphire illustrating ‘King Lear’, Act IV, Scene 6:

‘How dizzy ‘tis, to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!’

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Red and white roses illustrating Henry VI, Part I, Act II, scene 4, Warwick’s speech:

‘This brawl today,
Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Hawthorn and bramble illustrating ‘As you like it’, Act III, scene 1, Rosalind’s speech:

‘There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles, all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Briars, furze, gorse and blackthorn illustrating ‘The Tempest’, Act IV, scene 1, Ariel’s speech:

‘So I charm’d their ears
That, calf-like, they my lowing followed through
Tooth’d briers, sharp Furzes, pricking Gorse, and Thorns.’

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Wild pansy (’Love -in-idleness’) illustrating ‘Midsummer Nights Dream’, Act II, Scene 2, as the basis of the elixir which makes Titania, Oberon’s queen, fall in love with Bottom the ass.

‘Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Oak leaves, acorns and rosehips illustrating ‘Timon of Athens’, Act IV, scene 3:

‘Why should you want? Behold, the earth hath roots;
Within this mile break forth a hundred springs;
The oaks bear mast, the briers scarlet hips;
The bounteous housewife, nature, on each bush
Lays her full mess before you’.

First edition of this delightful collection of floral poetry illustrated with unusual colour printed plates, each of two or three tints probably applied to the plate simultaneously. They are described by the online catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale as lithographs, but they appear to be a kind of stipple engraving. A couple are marked as being after drawings by Poitreau, one of the most prominent botanical artists of the era (alongside Redouté). The work is dedicated to the young salon host, collector and bibliophile, the duchesse de Berry (1798-1870).
The plates comprise: Le lis, la rose, la violette, la fleur d’oranger, la scabieuse, le bleuet, l’immortelle, la perce-neige, le soleil, les marguerites, le laurier rose, l’hortensia, le souci, l’astérie, le pavot et le narcisse and le lilas.

The short article plays on Banks’s youthful reputation at Oxford, his curiosity for the natural world and his experiences in the South Seas: ‘As nature has been his constant study, it cannot be supposed that the most engaging part of it, the fair sex, have escaped his notice; and if we may be suffered to conclude from his amorous descriptions, the females of most of the countries he has visited, have undergone every critical inspection by him...’� The plate is described in BM Satires 5146.

A curious florilegium, with extensive lithographed devotional text, presumably after the handwriting of author (’Jean, prêtre’) and a series of handcoloured lithographs. The latter include 31 of flowers (marigold, violet, primula, iris, cornflower, honeysuckle etc) which are paired with a description and devotional meditation on the opposite page. The others depict a hermit, a memento mori, a decorative contents list and (at the end) women in a religious procession with a banner. At least one them is signed ‘Jean’. The prefatory text is from Chateaubriand’s Le Martyrs: ‘En achevant ces mots, Zacharie s’arrêta, me montra le ciel où nous devions nous retrouver un jour, et, sans me laisser le temps de me jeter à ses pieds, il me quitta après m’avoir donné sa dernière leçon. C’est ainsi que Jésus-Christ dont il imite l’exemple, se plaisoit à instruire ses disciples, en se promenant au bord du lac de Génésareth, et faisoit parler l'herbe des champs et le lis de la vallée’.

Although marked ‘Deposé’ on the first leaf, we have been unable to find any other copies or record of its publication. It was presumably printed in very small numbers.

A delightful example of Japanese art of flower arrangement, ikebana, in the form of 24 ‘Rikka Zu’ (flower arrangements), with an important provenance. The arrangements combine boughs of trees or bamboo. with flowers including chrysanthemums, lotus, lilies, irises, and cherry blossom. The style is deliberately and strikingly asymmetrical, with stems tightly bundled at the foot in keeping with prevailing decorative aesthetics.

The manuscript is dated, on the first extant image, Kansei 4 (1792) July 7th and there is a further inscription to the verso of one fold, now partly obscured by a paper strip (an old reinforcement) but still legible. It reads: ‘The lord Todo Izumino-kami, when his ambassador’s mission at Kyoto had a celebration in Ryokan’ and ‘Ikeno bo’. Ikenobo was the oldest and most important school of ikebana in Japan, founded at Kyoto in the fifteenth century, while the Todo clan were an ancient Samurai family with origins in the sixteenth century. The manuscript may be considerably older than the inscription of 1792. Its style is closely comparable with a manuscript now at Cambridge, Ikenobō rikka no zu (CUL FJ.978.12) dated to the ‘seventeenth or eighteenth century’ (2223 in Hayashi and Kornicki, Early Japanese books in Cambridge University Library).

First edition. An elegant new year gift book, comprising an illustrated survey of the popular French rose varieties, notes on culture and cultivation and a collection of rose poetry, completed with a calendar for the year 1819. The finely engraved plates are after Pancrace Bessa, a pupil and collaborator of Henri Redouté, painting tutor to the duchesse de Berry, and from 1823, replacing Redouté as official painter at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle. The book was reissued several times with added calendars for successive years. The varieties illustrated include: Grand cuisse de nymphe, Rose de Portland, Damas simple, Manteau d’Evêque and Rose Bichonne. Nissen 1266; Pritzel 6445.