Warner, Williams, and Moore | The Orchid Album, London, 1882-1897, 11 vols, publisher's pictorial cloth gilt

Robert Warner, Benjamin Samuel Williams, and Thomas Moore

The Orchid Album, Comprising Coloured Figures and Descriptions of New, Rare, and Beautiful Orchidaceous Plants. London: B.S. Williams, 1882-1897

11 volumes, large 4to (303 x 240mm.), half-titles, title-pages, 528 lithographed plates by and after John Nugent Fitch, mostly hand-coloured, a few colour-printed, publisher's pictorial cloth gilt, edges gilt, foxing (heavier to text leaves than plates), some plates and text becoming loose, a few leaves detached, minor wormholes to spines of some volumes, lower joint of volume one becoming detached, extremities rubbed 

A beautiful complete set of this important record of all the greatest orchid varieties, discovered and described during the nineteenth-century, with exquisite illustrations of the highest quality by John Nugent Fitch. The obituary of Benjamin Samuel Williams in volume 9 states, “In 1881 he commenced his magnum opus, the Orchid Album, which as projected with the idea of supplying a demand for illustrations of orchidaceous plants, with botanical descriptions of the plants figured, and notes on their cultivation […] its appearance was hailed with great satisfaction in horticultural circles throughout the world, and it numbers amongst its subscribers nearly all lovers of orchids and many of our leading and most influential horticulturalists”.

LITERATURE:

Great Flower Books, p. 80; Nissen, BBI, 2107; The Orchid Observed, 23; Stafleu, TL2, 6282