Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$750.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: 2nd edition. Large folio (14.5"x11"). (3), [6]-86pp. 10 full-page colour plates of paintings of Canadian wild flowers (with tissue guards). Title page is also decorated with colour flowers. Text has detailed descriptions of thirty different flowers. Original green cloth boards, with gilt titles and decoration to front, blind stamped titles to rear, a little soiled. Professionally re-backed. All edges gilt. Plates V and VI are reversed in sequence. Endpapers and paste-downs are dark brown. Pages browning slightly at edges, boards darkened on front corners, a few small stains and surface scratches. Previous owners name of front end paper. For this 2nd edition book, Agnes FitzGibbon created and paid for eleven new stones at Burland L'Africain Chromolithographers, Montreal. The plates were numbered I-X, and the designs of II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII were reversed for aesthetic reasons. FitzGibbon painted 5,500 more sheets with transparent washes; stencils sped the pace of the work. Overall a good copy of this beautiful book. Following are the 10 hand-coloured illustrations:Plate I - Indian Tulip, Showy Orchis, Painted Cup, Scarlet Cup, Cone Flower Plate II - Sweet Wintergreen, One Flowered Pyrola, Flowering Raspberry, Speedwell - American Brooklime Plate III - Adders-Tongue, Dog-Toothed Violet, White Trillium - Death Flower, Rock Columbine Plate IV - Squirrel Corn, Purple Trillium - Death Flower - Birth Root, Wood Geranium - Cranes Bill, Chickweed Wintergreen Plate V - Yellow Lady's Slippers, Large Blue Flag, Small Cranberry Plate VI - Wild Orange Lily, Canadian Harebell, Showy Lady's Slipper Plate VII - Early Wild Rose, Pentstemon Beard-Tongue Plate VIII - Sweet Scented Water Lily, Yellow Pond LilyPlate IX, Pitcher Plant Plate X, Liver Leaf - Wind Flower, Bellwort, Wood Anemone, Spring Beauty.Excerpts from the preface of the book reads as follows:.First, the designs - all the flowers having been copied from Nature's Own Book, by Mrs. Fitzgibbon - then the subsequent grouping and lithographing on stone by her own hand, and finally the colouring of each separate plate - a gigantic effort to be executed by one person. With a patriotic pride in her native land, Mrs. F. was desirous that the book should be entirely of Canadian production, without any foreign aid, and thus far her design has been carried out; whether successfully or not, remains for the public to decide. . And finally it was at last agreed that the Book of Canadian Wild Flowers should be the work of Mrs. Fitzgibbon, and the descriptions of the plants as delineated by her hand, should be selected and adapted to suit the subjects of the Plates from Mrs. Traill's MS.Toronto, December, 1868. C.P. Traill.
Seller: Lord Durham Rare Books (IOBA), St. Catharines, ON, Canada
Price: US$1600.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: folio. pp. [3]-4, [7]-8, [9]-88. (this copy lacking the Preface, pp. 5-6 which was never bound in). tipped-in 3-line errata leaf referring to errors on p. 8. chromolithographed title & 10 chromolithographed plates all with additional hand-colouring. tissue guards. original blind & gilt-stamped cloth, all edges gilt (spine ends & corners worn & frayed). ownership entry of Mrs. David Smith, Lakefield, Ontario, dated December 1869. Third Edition of the first large-scale colour plate botanical to be entirely produced and printed in the country. The work combined the talents of Canadian pioneer, author and accomplished amateur botanist Catharine Parr Traill and her niece Agnes Fitzgibbon, who took drawing and lithography lessons in preparation for the task. Five hundred copies of the first edition of 1868 were printed by subscription, and sold for the hefty sum of $5 each. The plates, copied from Nature s Own Book by the artist, were subsequently grouped, lithographed and coloured entirely by her own hand with the aid of three daughters and two female painting school students. In the second and third editions the plates were printed in colour and finished by hand. In the third and fourth editions, the plates and text were re-arranged, with the previous first plate and corresponding text appearing at the end of the volume and the last plate and corresponding text appearing at the beginning. This is the only edition to contain a 2-page description of the title plate. Thirty different wild flowers are depicted and described, including liver-leaf, Indian turnip, white trillium, adder's tongue, sweet wintergreen, squirrel-corn, yellow lady's slippers, wild orange lily, early wild rose, pitcher plant, &c. cfLande 1660. cfDionne III 1360. cfWatters p. 643.
Seller: D & E LAKE LTD. (ABAC/ILAB), Toronto, ON, Canada
Catharine Parr Traill & Agnes FitzGibbon. Canadian Wild Flowers.. John Lovell, Montreal, 1869.
Price: US$1750.00 + shipping
Description: Edition : Second Edition, Rebacked skillfully retaining upper board with contemporary cloth, gilt floral design and gilt text, lower board with contemporary cloth and embossed version of upper board, flat spine with gilt black calf label. , ?It was not, however, until years after [her husband?s] death that [Catharine] had the opportunity to collaborate with her widowed niece Agnes Dunbar FitzGibbon [Moodie], daughter of Susanna Moodie and like her mother a skilled illustrator of flowers. Agnes not only taught herself lithography but secured publication by John Lovell in 1868 of ?Canadian wild flowers?, to which she contributed the illustrations and Catharine the text. The book was sold by subscription and went through at least four editions.? (Dict of Cdn Bio. XII:998)The text is written by the famous early Canadian author Catharine Parr Traill. The book describes various plantlife found in Canada. It is the earliest Canadian botanical book and was completely produced in Canada itself. It was published in the year of Confederation., Size : Folio, Title is illustrated, and there are 26 decorative initials. Complete with 10 full coloured lithographic plates, which are printed in colour and in this example they are finished beautifully by further handcolouring. , References : Dictionary of Canadian Biography XII:998, P. (4), title, (1), dedication, (1) preface 5-6, contents 7-8, 9-86, (4). One leaf is reinforced at the edge with a narrow strip of tissue paper. Otherwise, the book is in excellent condition. Text is clean and plates are vivid.
Seller: Alexandre Antique Prints, Maps & Books, Toronto, ON, Canada