Ocean Gardens: The History of the Marine Aquarium

Description:

First edition. Published only three years after P.H. Gosse's, The Aquarium (1854), which began this Victorian craze, this scarce, finely illustrated work includes attractive, hand-coloured plates of marine life suitable for the aquarium. Henry Noel Humphreys (1810-1879) was, among other things, an illustrator, naturalist and entomologist (he collaborated with J.O. Westwood, as illustrator of a number of books on butterflies and moths). He also wrote and illustrated works on Greek and Roman coins, archaeology and the art of writing and printing.

Freeman 1833.

Condition

Small 8vo, orig. green cloth, lightly rubbed to extremities, blind-stamped decorative border to both boards, gilt title and decoration to front board and spine, all edges gilt. Some foxing, particularly to endpapers, frontispiece (which lacks tissue guard), title-page and final page, and occasionally elsewhere, including lightly to the margins of a few plates. Very good.