Details
ELWES, Henry John (1846-1922). A Monograph of the Genus Lilium. London: [1877-]1880.
2° (552 x 375mm). Title with engraved floral border, two chromolithographic maps on one sheet, showing distribution of lilies, (with slight marginal tear), 48 hand-coloured lithographic plates of lilies by W. H. Fitch, and a loosely inserted albumen-print view of the Himalayan foothills by Samuel Bourne, signed in the negative "Bourne 261". (Without the later supplements, one plate with two tears, another lacking tip of bottom corner, occasional light soiling, mainly to versos of plates.) Contemporary brown half morocco, t.e.g. (extremities rubbed, slightly scuffed).
FIRST EDITION of Elwes's comprehensive monograph: it included nearly all the lilies known in cultivation at the time of publication. A supplement by A. Grove and A. D. Cotton was published in seven parts between 1939 and 1940, with two further parts by W. B. Turrill in 1960 and 1962. Elwes was a keen naturalist, gardener and traveller, whose interest in lilies was first stimulated by a visit to the Himalayas. His sister, Edith Mary Elwes, was Frederick DuCane Godman's first wife, and Elwes himself was a close friend of Godman and companion on several of the latter's expeditions. In Godman's obituary in The Ibis magazine, Elwes wrote that "it was largely owing to his and Salvin's example that I was able to become something more than an egg-collector". Nissen BBI 594; Great Flower Books p. 56; Stafleu TL2 1664.
2° (552 x 375mm). Title with engraved floral border, two chromolithographic maps on one sheet, showing distribution of lilies, (with slight marginal tear), 48 hand-coloured lithographic plates of lilies by W. H. Fitch, and a loosely inserted albumen-print view of the Himalayan foothills by Samuel Bourne, signed in the negative "Bourne 261". (Without the later supplements, one plate with two tears, another lacking tip of bottom corner, occasional light soiling, mainly to versos of plates.) Contemporary brown half morocco, t.e.g. (extremities rubbed, slightly scuffed).
FIRST EDITION of Elwes's comprehensive monograph: it included nearly all the lilies known in cultivation at the time of publication. A supplement by A. Grove and A. D. Cotton was published in seven parts between 1939 and 1940, with two further parts by W. B. Turrill in 1960 and 1962. Elwes was a keen naturalist, gardener and traveller, whose interest in lilies was first stimulated by a visit to the Himalayas. His sister, Edith Mary Elwes, was Frederick DuCane Godman's first wife, and Elwes himself was a close friend of Godman and companion on several of the latter's expeditions. In Godman's obituary in The Ibis magazine, Elwes wrote that "it was largely owing to his and Salvin's example that I was able to become something more than an egg-collector". Nissen BBI 594; Great Flower Books p. 56; Stafleu TL2 1664.