Temple of Flora, or Garden of the Botanist poet, Painter and Philosopher.

Descripción:

4to., (15 2/8 x 12 2/8 inches). Aquatint frontispiece by Cosway after Burke, engraved title-page over two leaves with vignette headpiece to first leaf by Tomkins after Burney; 2 stipple engravings by Russell and Opie after Maddocks, and Reinagle after Bartolozzi and Landseer, 28 hand-colored aquatints by Pether, Thornton, Edwards, Reinagle & Henderson, after drawings by Dunkarten, Roffe, Gaugain, Quilley, Maddox, Burk, Maddan and Stadler (last three plates a bit browned and spotted). Contemporary full crushed red morocco, elaborately decorated in gilt and blind, all edges gilt, head and foot of spine worn with minor loss, edges rubbed). Provenance: with the engraved armorial bookplate of Arma Comitis de Bradford, Weston Library, on the front paste-down. First quarto edition, with an additional plate: "Artichoke Protea" by Quilley after Henderson, not included in the original folio edition of 1807 published under the title "New Illustrations of the Sexual System of Linnaeus". Other images are reduced copies of those in the folio edition. According to Dunthorne, the quarto edition was published initially as fourth level prizes in the lottery that Thornton ran in an attempt to recoup the losses he had incurred during the production of the folio edition. Thornton's "Temple of Flora" was a "gigantic literary speculation which was to ruin him. This work, . was first advertised in 1797 and began to appear in parts from 1799, published by T. Bensley and priced at 1 guinea (later 25s). The complete text with illustrations was advertised as available in 1799 for 20 guineas. Its bibliographic history was complicated, the three main parts being issued at a variety of times and in different formats. . The huge costs of illustration and printing seriously eroded Thornton's personal fortune. As a promotional exercise in 1804 he exhibited the originals of his plates at 49 New Bond Street, and in 1811 an act of parliament (51 George III, cap. 103) authorized his 'Royal Botanical Lottery', for which he issued 20,000 tickets at 2 guineas each. The top prize was the set of original paintings, with other prizes of his printed illustrations and texts. In spite of his efforts to market his publications, his finances never recovered. At the heart of the New Illustration was Thornton's scheme to produce a specifically British botanical publication of a magnificence to surpass all previous examples. Teams of master engravers and colourists, including Francesco Bartolozzi, Richard Earlom, and John Landseer, used the full range of modern printing techniques to produce coloured illustrations after paintings by such prominent artists as Sir William Beechey, James Opie, Henry Raeburn, John Russell, Abraham Pether, and his two favoured illustrators, Peter Henderson and Philip Reinagle. The illustrations were not restricted to the 'choicest flowers' in the world, but included portraits of eminent botanists-including the famous portrait of Linnaeus in Lapp (Sami) dress-elaborate allegories, such as 'Cupid Inspiring the Plants to Love', and a bust of Linnaeus being honoured by Aesculapius, Flora, Ceres, and Cupid. The text, which includes a translation of Linnaeus's 'Prize dissertation' on the sexuality of plants (1759), is similarly not bound to accounts and texts of scientific botany, but deals with a wide range of religious, political, spiritual, social, and emotional issues, not only in prose but also through extensive use of poems by modern and ancient authors. It is easy to regard much of this material as irrelevant to the publication's botanical aims, but this is to miss the universal human and religious purposes of botanical learning in Thornton's system of thought" (Martin Kemp for DNB) Thornton was destined for a career in the church, but while at Trinity College, Cambridge he found inspiration in the botanical lectures of Thomas Martyn and switched to studying medicine. He went on to lecture in medical botany at Guy's Hospital. Conceived on a grandio. N° de ref. del artículo 000206

Denunciar este artículo

Detalles bibliográficos

Título: Temple of Flora, or Garden of the Botanist ...
Editorial: London: for the author 1812.
Encuadernación: Encuadernación de tapa dura
Edición: 1ª Edición