Thomas Grenville's Copy
WALCOTT, John. Descriptions and Figures of Petrifactions, found in the Quarries, Gravel-Pits, &c, near Bath. Bath: Printed for the Author, by S. Hazard. [1779.]
8vo. Contemporary half sheep, spine gilt-ruled in compartments, lettered directly in gilt, edges sprinkled blue; pp. v, [2], 7-51, [1], iv, with 16 engraved plates by J. Collyer after drawings by the author, typographic tailpieces; light rubbing to boards, hinges cracked but holding firm, small crack to head of spine, extremities a little rubbed; occasional light spotting, some light offsetting from plates, but generally a very good, clean copy; oval gilt bookplate of Thomas Grenville to front pastedown.
First edition of this early catalogue of fossils, offering a survey of the author’s own collection, with a distinguished contemporary provenance.
John Walcott (1754-1831), an Irish-born naturalist and fossil collector from Bath, is perhaps best known for his Synopsis of British Birds (1789). As its title suggests, the present volume offers descriptions and finely engraved illustrations of fossils, mainly seashells, “found lodged in stone in every part of the environs of Bath”. The author, who regarded these specimens as “undoubted natural proofs of the universal deluge”, classified them and sought to identify their living counterparts – though he acknowledged defeat with several which are now known to be extinct species. His work was later honoured by James Sowerby (1757-1822), who in 1822 named a local extinct brachiopod “Spiriferina walcotti”.
This book would have been familiar to the next generation of geologists, and it proved particularly valuable to William Smith (1769-1839) in his pioneering studies of the Bath area’s stratigraphy (arrangement of rock layers), which led to the creation of the first geological map of Britain. The plates include illustrations of the bones of an ichthyosaur.
Provenance: From the legendary library of Thomas Grenville (1755-1846), British politician and bibliophile. By the time of his death, Grenville had assembled a collection of over 20,000 volumes, including a vellum Gutenberg Bible, a Mainz Psalter, and a Shakespeare First Folio. Much of his collection was bequeathed to the British Museum.
ESTC T6158. See Hugh Torrens, “Geological communication in the Bath area in the last half of the eighteenth century” in Images of the Earth: Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences (1979).
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