Eleazar Albin | A natural history of spiders, and other curious insects, 1736, contemporary calf gilt

Eleazar Albin

A natural history of spiders, and other curious insects. London: John Tilly for R. Montagu, J. Brindley, O. Payne, J. Worrall, T. Worrall and T. Boreman, 1736

FIRST EDITION, 4to (285 x 220mm.), woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces, hand-coloured engraved frontispiece, 53 engraved plates numbered 1-53 (numbers 1-46 hand-coloured, with plate 35bis, and no plate numbered 52), contemporary mottled calf gilt (plausibly by John Brindley), spine gilt in compartments, lacking list of subscribers, joints starting to crack

A fine copy of Albin's extensive treatise on British spiders, based on Joseph Dandridge's unpublished work, complemented by Robert Hooke's observations on the Carter spider, the jumping spider, the flea and various lice, and Richard Mead on the tarantula and the scorpion. The frontispiece incorporates a portrait of the author on horseback.

LITERATURE:

ESTC T64158; Nissen ZBI 60

PROVENANCE:

price £1-15-0 on flyleaf; Sir John Barker, 6th Bart (1724-1757) of Grimston Hall, Suffolk, armorial bookplate; William Fellowes, 2nd Lord de Ramsey (1848-1925), father-in-law to Henry Rogers Broughton, bookplate with crested monogram WF at rear of volume