Search Results

Cloth, 4to, 30 cm, xxvii, 147 pp, ills (some colour). Fine in Fine dustwrapper. 0300046529

The first of a series of catalogues describing selections of the rare books and other material in the Oak Spring Garden Library - a collection formed by Mrs Paul Mellon. The Sylva, which deals with books and manuscripts on trees, is the smallest volume of the series, describing nearly fifty books, manuscripts, or drawings, from a tiny 1555 book on oaks to early nineteenth-century advice on large-scale tree-planting, a range including both great books, like Evelyn's Sylva, Duhamel's Traite des Arbres, and Michaux's North American Sylva, and more modest ones, like Marshall's American Grove, which helped introduce the riches of American forests to European gardens in the eighteenth century. Each description makes clear the background of each book and its relationship to others, while a generous number of illustrations in colour and black and white help to give an impression of their contents. Many of the Oak Spring copies have particularly interesting associations, recorded in inscriptions, bookplates, or binding details, all of which are described. Entries are bibliographically described, but the catalogue is made highly readable with discursive background essays giving the historical setting that should appeal to gardeners and garden historians as well as book collectors and librarians. An atttractively produced volume. Photography by Greg Heins. Indexed.

[Keywords: TREES. bibliography bibliographies bibliographical bibliographie bibliografia wykbooks 02544 Trees Tree planting Catalogs Catalogues Sylva Rare books botany Gardens Parks Oak Spring Garden Library Raphael, Sandra Heins, Greg]

Item number: ZVAB-02544