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Second (revised) edition (the first of 1822). Loudon’s was one of the most widely read gardening encyclopaedias of the Victorian era and ran to at east six editions, covering plant culture, botany, garden design, and an international survey and history of gardening.

First edition. Evidently a companion to Lowe’s Beautiful Leaved Plants (1861) which was issued in a similar binding in 1868.

First published in 1861, Lowe’s book reflected and promoted the Victorian fascination for foliage plants, growing wild, in the garden, the greenhouse (’stove’) or house. It capitalised on the potential of chromolithography to provide vibrant and realistic impressions of leaf colours and textures.

First published in 1873 and reprinted several times.

First edition of one of the most influential works of French garden theory in French. Morel was the father of landscape gardening in France, best known for the Théorie des Jardins and for his work with the marquis de Giradin in the celebrated garden at Ermenonville, and later at Malmaison. Morel never travelled to England, but was clearly influenced by theories of landscape being developed there. The title here bears a quote from Milton: ‘In narrow room nature’s Whole Wealth, yea more / A heav’n on earth...’ (Paradise Lost IV).

[bound with:]

—————. The English Garden: a Poem. Book the second... York: Printed by A. Ward; and sold by J. Dodsley... T. Cadell... and H. Denoyer... London; also by J. Todd... York. 1777. [and:]

—————. The English Garden: a Poem. Book the third... London: Printed by H. Goldney, for J. Dodsley... and T. Cadell... and sold by J. Todd... York. 1779. [And:]

—————. The English Garden: a Poem. Book the fourth... York Printed by A. Ward: and sold by J. Dodsley... T. Cadell... and R. Fauldner... London; and J. Todd, in York. 1781.

4 parts in one vol., 4to (255 × 203 mm), pp. [2], 35, [1]; [2], 33, [1]; 32; [2], 54, plus final blank; without the half-titles to second and third parts, the general title to the fourth part, and final advertisement leaf to the second part; some spotting in places; crease to title of first part; recent half leather, cloth sides.

Second edition of the first part, first editions of the other three. A rare collection, Mason’s ‘magnum opus, The English Garden (4 books, 1772–81), over 2400 lines of blank verse based on Virgil’s Georgics, a didactic poem concerning landscape, art, and gardening’ (Oxford DNB). The intersection of these three arts were a defining feature of late eighteenth-century aesthetics, Horace Walpole writing in 1773: ‘Poetry, Painting and Gardening, or the science of Landscape, will forever by men of Taste be deemed Three Sisters, or the “Three New Graces” who dress and adorn Nature’. Jackson, pp. 13, 53, 71, and 86; Gaskell 20, 24, and 26.