Sowerby, James de Carle and Edward Lear

Folio (14 3/4 x 10 7/8 in.; 375 x 275 mm).  60 lithographed plates (57 handcolored), after Sowerby on stone by Lear and printed by Hullmandel; occasional spot, mostly to versos. Publisher's green morocco-backed green pebbled cloth covered boards, flat spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt.

Adler p. 35; Hyman, p. 32; Nissen ZBI 1701; Wood 1872

A rare work, containing some of the finest known illustrations of tortoises and turtles, lithographed by Edward Lear and beautifully handcolored.

Sowerby and Lear first began working on the present plates in 1831, with forty plates published in the initial parts of Bell's "Monograph Testudinata" (1831-1842). That work was never finished due to the publisher's bankruptcy and the forty plates, together with twenty previously unpublished plates, were reissued in 1872 by Sowerby and Lear.

The Introduction by John Edward Gray explains the complicated publication of this extraordinary work: "This series of Plates was made under the superintendence of Mr. Thomas Bell, to illustrated his Monograph of the Testudinata, a work in which the author intended to represent and describe not only all the known recent, but also fossil species. The publication of this extensive work was unfortunately interrupted (by failure of the publisher [in 1836]) when only two-thirds of the plates that had been prepared (which in themselves formed but a limited portion of the intended work) were published ... The unsold stock and unpublished plates were purchased at Mr. Highley's sale by Mr. Sotheran, and the work has been in abeyance for many years. Mr. Bell has declined to furnish the text for the unpublished plates. In this difficulty Mr. Sotheran applied to me, and feeling that it was much to be regretted that such beautiful and accurate plates should be lost to science, and considering that such minutely accurate and detailed figures would not require to be accompanied by a description, I agreed to add a few lines of text to each Plate ... Many of the specimens figured and the rest of Mr. Bell's Collection of Reptiles are now to be found in the Anatomical and Zoological Museum at Cambridge" (Introduction)