Bury, Priscilla Susan Falkner.

First edition, large folio (620 x 470mm.), engraved title, list of subscribers, 45 hand-coloured engraved plates (only, of 51), by Robert Havell after Mrs Bury, contemporary brown half morocco gilt, morocco label on upper cover, edges gilt, [Dunthorne 71; Great Flower Books, p.53; Nissen BBI 306; Stafleu TL2 937], lacks plates 10 and 21-25 and corresponding text leaves to plates 21-25, plate 11 with plate number cropped, text leaf 31 with repaired tear extending into text

Rev. John Clowes (1743-1831), Broughton Hall, Manchester (subscriber), book label (see footnote to lot 22); Frederick, 2nd Lord Hesketh, bookplate

One of the greatest botanical publications of its time, with plates engraved and printed by Robert Havell, at the same time as he was publishing Audubon's Birds of America. Bury's work was conceived as a companion to William Roscoe's Monandrian Plants.

Priscilla Bury (1799-1872), was the daughter of Edward Dean Falkner (1750-1825), a wealthy Liverpool trader, who had been high sheriff of Lancashire in 1788, and his wife, Bridgett Tarleton (d. 1819), only daughter of John Tarleton a merchant and shipowner. She lived at Fairfield, two miles east of Liverpool, where she painted plants raised in the greenhouses there.