Filices Brittanicæ; an History of the British Proper Ferns. With Plain and Accurate Descriptions, and New Figures of all the Species and Varieties, T

First edition. Printed for John Binns, and sold by B. White and Son; J. Johnson, and J. Wallis, London; J. and J. Merrill, Cambridge; J. Fletcher, Oxford; and the booksellers at Edinburgh; [1785]. Quarto (10 1/8"" x 8 5/8"", 257mm x 219mm). [Full collation available.] With 31 hand-colored engraved plates. Bound in modern quarter calf over marbled boards. On the spine, five raised bands. Blind fleurons in the panels. Author and title gilt to the second panel. With the introduction errata slip pasted to the verso of the final leaf. A little cocked. Some rubbing to the extremities. Scattered mild foxing. On the title-page, the price has been scratched out and through-lined in ink. Ownership signatures of ""H. Davies L.S.S."" and ""R. Brisco Owen/ 1821"" to the upper fore-corner of the title-page. To the same spot is added a price-code (?) in blue graphite. James Bolton (1735-1799) was a weaver's son in the West Riding of Yorkshire who taught himself to draw as well as to engrave botanical (and, later, fungal and animal) illustrations. He gave drawing lessons to gentlewomen, which gave him entry to a world of patronage, including that of the Duchess of Portland (patroness of George Ehret, whom Bolton may well have met) and, after her death, of her cousin the Earl of Gainsborough. They would sponsor his best-known work, the History of Fungusses Growing about Halifax (1778-1790). This work filled the intervening years between the present title and its intended sequel (""The other British Ferns. may shortly appear. if the present part be well received,"" p. xvi), which was published in 1790. That said, the volume stands on its own with its own front- and end-matter. H. Davies is Rev. Hugh Davies (1739-1821), the Anglesey botanist, who first correlated Welsh plant names with their Latin binomials. A Fellow of the Linnaean Society (FLS, elected 1790), Davies collaborated with the leading botanists of his day, and published a major work of his own: Welsh Botanology (1813). Davies's will specifies that his botanical books are to be left to his grand-nephew (son of Davies's sister Ann's son Dr. Owen Owen) Robert Brisco Owen (1800-1883); the date confirms the promptness with which he received the volumes. Owen, Lord of the Manor of Haulfre, received his M.D. from Edinburgh University in 1823 (writing his dissertation on pneumonia) and was elected Fellow of the Linnaean Society in 1824. He worked as a surgeon for the East India Company, and eventually rose to be superintendent of the Company's botanic garden in the Deccan. He left the EIC in 1844, and in 1854 was Sheriff of Anglesey and later deputy lieutenant and justice of the peace. Henrey 464; Hunt II.II p. 526; Nissen, BBI 194.