A History of the Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland

Description:

First edition. Rare, only 600 copies printed. Beautifully illustrated with fine hand-coloured lithographic plates by Tuffen West, A. Hollick and R. Templeton; in addition 10 plates in Pt II which bear no signature were probably by O. Pickard-Cambridge; all printed by W. West. John Blackwall (1790-1881) was a British zoologist and renowned arachnologist. The present book, Blackwall's magnum opus, took more than a decade to produce. With only a small lens, he fully described over 300 spiders; 67 of these were new to science. 272 spiders are illustrated.

Curle pp 61-62; Nissen ZBI 380.

Condition

2 parts bound as one, folio (362x260mm), recent buckram, gilt title to spine. Very clean copy, without the foxing often found in this work. Very good.