A Natural History of English Insects; Illustrated with A Hundred Copper Plates, Curiously engraven from Life, and exactly coloured by the Author...

Description:

5th edition. As often with this edition, lacks Derham's notes and index. The attractive plates illustrate mostly butterflies and moths and their larvae on food-plants. A few plates illustrate other insects.

Eleazar Albin (d. 1742?) was a naturalist and watercolour painter. Very little is known of his early life, he may have been born somewhere in the German states to a family named Weiss. By 1708 he had adopted the surname Albin, had married, and was living in or near the parish of St James's, Piccadilly. Around 1709-10 Albin met Mary, dowager duchess of Beaufort, a keen botanist who encouraged him to begin work on a natural history of insects. The first plates were engraved in 1713 and work proceeded apace until the onset of financial difficulties caused by the death of his patroness in January 1715. Although Albin had by this time already issued Proposals for Printing by Subscription ‘A Natural History of English Insects’ ([1714?]) from his premises, ‘next the Green Man near Maggots Brew House’ (Bristowe, ‘Life’, 82) in Golden Square, subscriptions were slow to come in and as a result the work was not finally published until 1720. Ultimately attracting 170 subscribers, 'A Natural History of English Insects' contained 100 copper plates which were hand-coloured by the author on request. Albin stressed that the insects depicted were copied ‘exactly after the Life’ as he had ‘observed it as a great Fault of those who have gone before me in this Way, that they either did not look often enough at their Pattern, or affected to make the Picture outdo Nature’.

Albin further published 'A Natural History of Birds' (3 vols, 1731–8), 'A Natural History of Spiders' (1736), and illustrated (and possibly wrote) 'A Natural History of English Song-Birds' (1737). (ODNB)

Condition

4to, cont. full polished calf, scuffed, corners restored; recased and expertly rebacked in antique style with matching leather, rasied bands, leather title-piece; marbled endpapers. Occasional scattered foxing or light spotting, but still a very good, clean copy.

Provenance: Book plate of John Spencer Esq.

[Lisney: 123]