Natural History, Geology and Paleontology. William Crighton ...

Hammer

£1,000

Natural History, Geology and Paleontology. William Crighton Maclean FGS (1807-1900), of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk - Delineations of fossil Remains from the Crag of Suffolk about Felixstowe and Sutton, Sketched by William Crighton Maclean, 1852-1853, a folio of 54 illustrated sheets, along with a loosely-inserted ALS from one of Darwin's evolutionary critics, the palaeontologist Sir Richard Owen KCB, FRMS, FRS (1804-1892), comprising one illuminated title leaf, outline map of the United Kingdom and of Northern France, one panorama of the Suffolk coast in four named-views, an Assyrian obelisk (collector's stamp: WCM within a circle), one watercolour of the excavation trenches with exposed strata, and 49 fossil specimens and remains, almost all of the sheets are signed &/or inscribed, mostly watercolour or pen-and-ink, some pencil drawings, 28 x 22.5cm, along with one pen-and-ink and two pencil smaller sketches, being the excavation trenches again, a cross-section of a fossil, and an unusual double-headed marsupial, 12 x 18.5cm, the Owen letter, ALS of 2pp, addressed from the Royal College of Surgeons, London, and dated November 19th 1853, asking WCM if he can keep the drawings a little longer, and proceeding to comment that some are worth publishing, yet with the caveat that no publisher would undertake the monograph unless at the author's expense, and that a learned society would publish only a selection, and a contemporary manuscript, n.d., 4pp, listing historic British and European monarchs and aristocrats, contemporary brown roan gilt over cloth, rubbed and worn, starting to split in places yet holding, upper-cover with later 20th c MS label: Natural History (Drawings of Fossils Found at Felixstowe and Sutton Crag, About 1853), folio (29 x 23cm) 

Provenance: presumably sold by Samuel Aldred & Son, Yarmouth, Catalogue of the Collection of Objects of Art & Vertu, the Valuable Library of 2,200 Volumes of Books [...] Pictures and Drawings [...] from the Executor of the Will of the Late William Crighton Maclean, 30th August, 1900.