Cogent Arts & Humanities (Jan 2017)
Printing and publishing the illustrated botanical book in nineteenth century Great Britain
Abstract
In the nineteenth century there was an explosion of interest in gardening at all levels of English Society, including the new middle classes that had developed as a result of the Industrial Revolution. For several centuries botanical and gardening books had been available to the wealthier classes who could afford to buy them. These books were expensive to produce and could only be made available for sale in small editions. Coinciding with the craze for gardens and floraculture in nineteenth century Britain were developments in book making technology. After remaining the same since the time of Gutenberg, over the course of the century almost all aspects of book making were mechanized and books could be mass produced at a price that made them accessible to almost all economic levels of society. New cheaper methods of graphic illustration were developed which replaced the more expensive processes such as hand-colored engravings and aquatints. As a result, during the Victorian era, affordable scientifically accurate books that were also beautifully illustrated became more widely available. This paper discusses the developments in graphic illustration in the nineteenth century in relation to the botanical works by Priscilla Susan Bury, Jane Loudon, Anne Pratt, and James Shirley Hibberd. General trends in book illustration will be presented in relation to Bury’s A Selection of Hexandrian Plants Belonging to the Natural Orders of Amaryllidae and Liliacae (1831–1834), Loudon’s The Ladies Flower-Garden of Ornamental Bulbous Plants (1841), Pratt’s The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Great Britain (1850–1857), and Hibberd’s Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste and Recreations for Town Folk in the Study and Imitation of Nature (1857) and Familiar Garden Flowers (1879–1897).
Keywords
