SOWERBY, George Brettingham. A Conchological Manual.

Intergenerational Infighting over French Classification

SOWERBY, George Brettingham. A Conchological Manual. London: G.B. Sowerby. 1839.

8vo. Original brown cloth, printed paper label to spine; pp. [2], v, [1 (blank)], [130, [2], 4 (advertisements), 24 lithographic plates including hand-coloured frontispiece, 2 folding tables, in-text illustrations; front hinge sometime repaired with tape, tape marks to front free endpaper, scattered spotting throughout; contemporary bookplate of Petworth Literary and Scientific Society to front pastedown, nineteenth-century manuscript purchase note of F.G. Morgan, 1870 gift inscription from Morgan to George ?Sanders; a very good copy.

First edition of this encyclopaedic work vindicating the malacologist George Perry.

This is the major work of George Brettingham Sowerby II (1812–1884). Part of the Sowerby dynasty of naturalists and illustrators, he was the son of the George Brettingham Sowerby, who had been so vociferous in his condemnation of George Perry’s Conchology (1811) for its adoption of new French systems of classification (see Item 11). It is ironic, then, as well as a sign of British scientific progress, that G.B. Sowerby Junior’s work includes tables referring the reader to the conchological systems of not only Jean Baptiste Lamarck but also Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville.

Begun when the author was only twenty, this alphabetical guide to shells from across the world was designed as a conchological introduction for serious naturalists and general readers alike. Valued for its clear illustrations, it was widely used and ran to several editions, each greatly enlarged. Even in this, its most concise version, the book covers 488 species.

Provenance: bookplate of Petworth Literary and Scientific Society to the front pastedown, with a manuscript note that it was purchased from the Society by F.G. Morgan. The front free endpaper is inscribed by Morgan to Mr George Sanders (?), dated September 26th, 1870, ‘on his visit to Petworth on the above date’.

SKU: 2125974