PERRIN, Mrs. I.S. [Henry]. British Flowering Plants; Illustrated by Three Hundred Full-Page Coloured Plates Reproduced from Drawings ... With Detailed Descriptive Notes and an Introduction by Professor [George S.] Boulger. London: Bernard Quaritch. 1914.
Four vols, royal 4to. Original cream cloth, titled in gilt on spines and upper covers, top edges gilt; 300 coloured botanical plates after the watercolours of Mrs. Perrin; cloth a little sunned to spines, occasional foxing especially to endpapers and leaving plates largely unaffected, still a very handsome set, very good.
First and only edition, limited to 1000 copies, this number 961.
The author and artist express their objectives in the preface: "It attempts to be scientifically accurate as far as it goes, while expressed in language as little technical as possible, so as to be readily intelligible to the non-botanical reader … The object has been to supply a few interesting notes descriptive of the plants delineated and their allies, with such reference as space permits to their geographical distribution, physiology, cultivation, folk-lore, and uses." The main attractions of the set are the life-size watercolours by Ida Southwell Perrin (1860-1953), the wife of a clothes manufacturer who, apart from her own artistic endeavours, donated money to Leighton House, partly to accommodate sculptures by her daughter Ida Muriel Robins.
Nissen BBI 1509.
#2123144