Robert Sweet

A set of first editions of The British Flower Garden by Robert Sweet.

• Sold as a set of 7 volumes.
• Robert Sweet (British).
• The British Flower Garden; containing coloured figures and descriptions of the most ornamental and curious hardy herbaceous plants, including annuals, biennials, & perennials... The drawings by E.D. Smith. [With] The British Flower Garden (Series the Second), containing coloured figures and descriptions of the most ornamental and curious hardy flowering plants... [With] 'A Monograph on the Subordo V. of Amaryllideae, containing the Narcissineae' by Adrian Hardy Haworth [in volume I of the second series].
• London: For the author by W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1823-1825 & 1831-1838.
• Octavos.
• 712 hand-colored engraved plates, some of which are folding.
• 19th-century green half morocco, marbled sides, spines gilt in compartments with floral tools, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt.

A rare complete set of both series of this monumental work; an important record of the flowers cultivated in England during the early 19th century. Illustrated with more than seven hundred hand-colored plates, it also includes the rare monograph on the Amaryllideae by Adrian Hardy Haworth that was distributed as an appendix to the second series, volume I.

Robert Sweet began his career as a gardener and became a well-known horticulturist and member of the Linnean Society. Between 1826 and 1831 he 'occupied himself almost wholly in the production of botanical works, while still cultivating a limited number of plants in his garden at parson's Green, Fulham... His works included Hortus suburbanus Londinensis (1818); Geraniaceae (5 vols., 1820–30); Sweet's Hortus Britannicus (1826); Flora Australasica (1827–8); and an ornithological work, The British Warblers (1823). The botanical genus Sweetia was named in his honor by Candolle in 1825.