William Roscoe | Monandrian Plants of the Order Scimitaneae, Liverpool, [1824-]28, modern green half morocco

William Roscoe

Monandrian Plants of the Order Scitamineae, Chiefly Drawn from Living Specimens in the Botanic Garden at Liverpool. Liverpool: printed by George Smith, [1824-]1828

Folio (570 x 434mm.), 112 lithographed plates by Hullmandell, hand-coloured by George Graves, after Thomas Allport, Rebecca Miller, Margaret Roscoe, Mrs. James Dixon, Ellen Yates, Emily Fletcher, Mary Waln and unidentified "native artists", 3 uncoloured lithographed illustrations, printed sections from original wrappers for each part laid down at end, modern green half morocco, leaves uncut, marbled endpapers, 'canna indica' text leaf creased and reinforced on verso of outer margin, some light spotting

LIMITED TO 150 COPIES.

Roscoe was a banker from Liverpool and supporter of the liberal arts. The present work—his masterpiece—was originally issued in 15 parts, and is focused on a selection that is now considered part of the Zingiberales order of flowering plants. The order, which is almost exclusively tropical in origin, includes the canna lilies, arrowroot, ginger and turmeric. Roscoe provides 1 or 2 pages of text for each specimen, giving the plant's binomial, a technical description, then a fuller, more general description, and ending with "observations" (notes on where the plant is from, who has described it previously, and often when the drawing of the plant was made) and "references" (brief explanations of the small numbered dissections found on each plate).

The characteristic leaf shapes and flower-sprays provide the numerous artists of the work with some spectacular originals to work from. Helpfully, Roscoe identifies all but one of the artists, with the majority of the images having been provided by Thomas Allport. The plates are important relatively early lithographs which are attributed by Roscoe to George Graves, but they are almost certainly "actually printed by Hullmandell, though Graves may have placed the commission for Roscoe" (John Collins writing in the Plesch catalogue). Collins earlier notes that although Graves specialized in coloring natural history plates, he is not known as a lithographer.

LITERATURE:

Dunthorne 267; Great Flower Books, p. 74; Johnston 948; Nissen BBI 1677; Stafleu TL2 9505