Robert Hogg & Henry Graves Bull: 'The Herefordshire Pomona, ...

Hammer

£1,500

Robert Hogg & Henry Graves Bull: 'The Herefordshire Pomona, Containing Original Fugures and Descriptions of the Most Esteemed Kinds of Apples and Pears', Hereford, Jakeman & Carver, 1876-85, 2 volumes, 77 fine chromolithograph plates of apples and pears by Alice Ellis & Edith Bull complete, plus four uncoloured engraved plates and many text wood engraved illustrations as called for, errata slip to volume I, all plates tissue guarded, some tissue guards with foxing/spotting, a very small number of plates with marginal toning and light marginal foxing, but else all plates themselves generally very clean/VGC, folio, contemporary half calf gilt worn, vol. I top board loose, backstrips worn, vol. II backstrip part detached (but vast majority of detached parts present in packet), all edges gilt, armorial bookplates of Robert Broome to front pastedowns; together with Hogg & Graves Bull 'The Apple & Pear as Vintage Fruits', Hereford, Jakeman & Carver, 1886, x,[2],247pp, original cloth gilt. From the estate of Francis Jermyn Smith, M.B.E., fruit & potato merchant, of Lance Wood, Wisbech. The Herefordshire Pomona was initiated by the Woolhope Naturalists Field Club in order to restore Herefordshire to its fruit growing supremacy, and appeared in only 600 copies. The plates are after drawings by Edith E. Bull, Alice B. Ellis and W. G. Smith (1 only), and lithographed by G. Severeyns, the reknowned Belgian chromolithographer. A classic of late Victorian natural history, "One of the finest fruit books ever issued." (Sitwell 'Great Flower Books 1700-1900' p.59). (3)