PERRY, George Conchology, or the Natural History of Shells: Containing a New Arrangement of the Genera and Species. Illustrated by Coloured Engravings, Executed from the Natural Specimens, and Including the Latest Discoveries.

‘They Assailed His Nomenclature with Hatred and Abuse’

PERRY, George Conchology, or the Natural History of Shells: Containing a New Arrangement of the Genera and Species. Illustrated by Coloured Engravings, Executed from the Natural Specimens, and Including the Latest Discoveries. London: William Miller. 1811.

Large folio. Contemporary red morocco-backed boards with drab paper sides, modern rebacking, spine ruled and lettered directly in gilt; pp. [iv], ff. [61] of hand-coloured aquatint plates after John Clarke, each plate with leaf of descriptive letterpress to recto only; boards rubbed and worn at extremities, some toning to edges, vertical creases to free endpapers with 25-mm loss to foredge of rear free endpaper, light offsetting but plates generally clean, very good.

Several errors occur in the numbering of the plates: plate 5 is misnumbered as 3; plate 6 is misnumbered as 4; plate 23 is misnumbered as 5; and plate 54 is misnumbered as 3.

First edition of the only study of shells to be illustrated with hand-coloured aquatints, introducing a new classification system for molluscs to counter Linnaeus’s restrictive system of classification of lower animals.

An architect and stonemason by profession, George Perry (1771–1821) was one of a number of naturalists who took issue with the constraints of Linnaean classification: Linnaeus, for instance, divided all invertebrates into only two groups, insects (Insecta) and worms (Vermes). Inspired by the work of French scientists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who expanded the invertebrates into ten different classes, Perry designed this work to introduce a new classification system for molluscs, as well as to inspire artists with the intricate beauty of the shells themselves.

Unfortunately for Perry, he had a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In his native Liverpool, a city built on slavery, his abolitionist views meant that he received little support for his conchological work and had to move to London to find a receptive audience. Even then, his rejection of Linnaeus was ahead of its time, and his embrace of French notions inopportune when the two nations were at war. Peers such as George Brettingham Sowerby, whose work was directly challenged by Perry’s new system, conspired to suppress the work: ‘They ungenerously denied Perry’s right to be cited, and assailed his nomenclature with hatred and abuse. So powerful and evil was their influence that Perry’s Conchology has been practically suppressed by London writers. Even the brothers Adams, who offended against modern usage by adopting names from polynomial and pre-Linnean writers, yet refused to admit Perry’s names’ (Charles Hedley, see below). The high price of the volume, £16 6s, also limited its appeal, so that even when Lamarck’s work came to be accepted in Britain in the 1820s, Perry’s book was unjustly forgotten.

Nonetheless, a number of Perry’s classifications remain valid today, while John Clarke’s illustrations are admired for their artistic flair, if not always for their anatomical accuracy. The specimens were drawn from a number of private collections including that of Elizabeth Bligh, given to her by her husband, Captain William Bligh of H.M.S. Bounty fame.

Nissen ZBI 1:3134. See Hedley, ‘Studies on Australian Mollusca. Part VI.’ Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales (1902).

SKU: 2125787