![BURY, Priscilla Susan [née Falkner] ( fl. 1824-1867). A Selection of Hexandrian Plants, belonging to the Natural Orders Amaryllidae and Liliacae. London: Robert Havell the younger, 1831-1834.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2012/NYR/2012_NYR_02607_0126_000(bury_priscilla_susan_nee_falkner_a_selection_of_hexandrian_plants_belo063753).jpg?w=1)
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BURY, Priscilla Susan [née Falkner] ( fl. 1824-1867). A Selection of Hexandrian Plants, belonging to the Natural Orders Amaryllidae and Liliacae. London: Robert Havell the younger, 1831-1834.
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BURY, Priscilla Susan [née Falkner] ( fl. 1824-1867). A Selection of Hexandrian Plants, belonging to the Natural Orders Amaryllidae and Liliacae. London: Robert Havell the younger, 1831-1834.
2o (600 x 488 mm). 48 (of 51, lacking plates 4, 26, and 51) hand-colored engraved aquatint and partially color-printed plates, the plates engraved, printed and colored by Havell after Bury. (Some staining, a few plates creased, plates and text strengthened along inner margin, some mostly marginal tears to text leaves, text to plate 8 torn crossing text and repaired.) Contemporary green half roan, gilt, the flat spine gilt in compartments, titled in one and lettered at the foot, marbled edges (extremities a little rubbed and scuffed, joints partially split). Provenance: Mary P. Ferris, presented to the Tarrytown Historial Society, 21 Nov. 1889.
A RARE WORK. "ONE OF THE MOST SPLENDID BOTANICAL WORKS TO BE PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY" (Tomasi). Priscilla Susan Falkner was the daughter of a rich Liverpool merchant whose estate outside the city at Fairfields "boasted a garden with many rare and exotic plants" (Tomasi). From a young age she was an enthusiastic botanist and flower painter, and by 1829 had produced a number of images which she wished to publish. Encouraged by her distinguished friends, the zoologist William Swainson and the botanist William Roscoe, the publication of the present work under Swainson's name was planned, with plates by the lithographer Charles Joseph Hullmandel. However, in 1830 Falkner married Edward Bury F.R.S. (1794-1858), a wealthy and ingenious railway engineer, and the work was eventually published by Robert Havell the younger. Havell's skill as an engraver showed Bury's watercolors of hexandrian (i.e. six-stamened) plants to their best advantage, as Tomasi notes: "[he] managed to translate the artist's fine watercolours into aquatints of even more striking beauty," described by Dunthorne as "finely coloured plates of perfect technique, very decorative and ''modern'' in feeling." The list of subscribers totals 79 (including Audubon), and it is unlikely that many more copies were printed, accounting for the book's rarity, which is noted by both Stafleu and Cowan and Pritzel. BM(NH) I, p.292; Brunet I:1417 ("Magnifique publication"); Dunthorne p.184; Great Flower Books p.53; Nissen BBI 306; Pritzel 1403 ("Opus splendidissimum"); Stafleu and Cowan 937; Tomasi Oak Spring Flora 86.
2o (600 x 488 mm). 48 (of 51, lacking plates 4, 26, and 51) hand-colored engraved aquatint and partially color-printed plates, the plates engraved, printed and colored by Havell after Bury. (Some staining, a few plates creased, plates and text strengthened along inner margin, some mostly marginal tears to text leaves, text to plate 8 torn crossing text and repaired.) Contemporary green half roan, gilt, the flat spine gilt in compartments, titled in one and lettered at the foot, marbled edges (extremities a little rubbed and scuffed, joints partially split). Provenance: Mary P. Ferris, presented to the Tarrytown Historial Society, 21 Nov. 1889.
A RARE WORK. "ONE OF THE MOST SPLENDID BOTANICAL WORKS TO BE PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY" (Tomasi). Priscilla Susan Falkner was the daughter of a rich Liverpool merchant whose estate outside the city at Fairfields "boasted a garden with many rare and exotic plants" (Tomasi). From a young age she was an enthusiastic botanist and flower painter, and by 1829 had produced a number of images which she wished to publish. Encouraged by her distinguished friends, the zoologist William Swainson and the botanist William Roscoe, the publication of the present work under Swainson's name was planned, with plates by the lithographer Charles Joseph Hullmandel. However, in 1830 Falkner married Edward Bury F.R.S. (1794-1858), a wealthy and ingenious railway engineer, and the work was eventually published by Robert Havell the younger. Havell's skill as an engraver showed Bury's watercolors of hexandrian (i.e. six-stamened) plants to their best advantage, as Tomasi notes: "[he] managed to translate the artist's fine watercolours into aquatints of even more striking beauty," described by Dunthorne as "finely coloured plates of perfect technique, very decorative and ''modern'' in feeling." The list of subscribers totals 79 (including Audubon), and it is unlikely that many more copies were printed, accounting for the book's rarity, which is noted by both Stafleu and Cowan and Pritzel. BM(NH) I, p.292; Brunet I:1417 ("Magnifique publication"); Dunthorne p.184; Great Flower Books p.53; Nissen BBI 306; Pritzel 1403 ("Opus splendidissimum"); Stafleu and Cowan 937; Tomasi Oak Spring Flora 86.