THREE COLLECTORS OF ALGAE 1. [SEAWEED ALBUM]. Collector unknown, probably 19th century. This user has pressed most of their specimens on a separate piece of paper before inserting them into the album, but some larger pieces are stuck straight 4to, ll. 137, of which 75 have seaweed specimens; there are approximately 85 in. The collector was evidently British, the two inscribed labels hinting to a pressed seaweed species in total; original black roan binding, gilt and West Country locality, or perhaps an expedition to that area: Dartmouth and blindstamped with floral tools, rubbed; spine cracked and detached at bottom, the Isles of Scilly. In each case the inscription gives the Latin names for each some loss at top of spine; patterned endpapers; leaves multi-coloured, edges species, both of them species of Delassaria algae. The user’s interest is not gilt; slightly stained throughout but in good condition; seaweed mostly intact; purely scientific but to a large degree aesthetic: care has been taken in many one specimen is missing, one has detached from its paper and is damaged, cases to achieve symmetrical or circular forms and eye-catching arrangements others have suffered some loss, else in very good condition; the last specimen of the specimens, though some designs were more successful than others. has adhered to the preceding page; inscriptions to two specimens. One note written in pencil on the back of a particularly botched bit of algae £550 attests to the user’s visual sensibilities: ‘very bad’. This is not to say that their aim is purely artistic: the significance of the two adjoining Delassaria algae A very attractive personal collection of seaweed assembled by an unknown might be their geographical origins and resulting differences, and there is owner in a generic ‘album’, with gilt-edge pages in a variety of pastel hues. evidently some attempt to place similar species in proximity. Indeed the album Seaweed collecting in the Victorian era is now considered to have been a appears to have been designed as a whole rather than assembled piece by piece prominently feminine pursuit (though there were undoubtedly male amateur as the specimens were discovered. collectors of seaweed), typified as such by the fact that Queen Victoria is said to have created an album. Women could engage in science as a social accomplishment, winning the admiration of professional, male scientists, and aiding them in their endeavours. Numerous books published on the subject, both scientific and amateur, attest to the popularity of seaweed collecting in the era. Among them, and of particular fame in the history of early female photography, was Anna Atkins’s cyanotype Photographs of British Algae (1843). Later came William Harvey’s important Manual of Marine Algae (1849). At the height of interest in Britain, seaside-shops were selling scrap paper and all the necessary gear for cutting and preserving algae. 2. [SEAWEED ALBUM]. Algae Britannicae. Collector unknown, probably 19th some samples have been ‘dredged from Plymouth harbour’. Whether the century. ‘dredging’ was carried out personally by the collector is doubtful, but it is nonetheless clear that the owner of this album was an extremely dedicated Vol. II only? Folio, ll. 75, of which 54 have seaweed specimens, amounting to amateur phycologist, with some degree of knowledge. Some specimens are 98 seaweed species; in original brown buckram binding, ¼ dark blue noted for their ‘fine colour’, ‘state of growth’ or for being ‘in fruit’. morocco, gilt, title gilt on spine, gilt raised bands, rubbed; leather and metal clasp intact; pages pale green, stained in places, sometimes by seaweed; seaweed in excellent condition, some samples very large and complete; some labels likely missing; user’s pencil marks throughout, handwritten labels to many samples. £1500 An impressive album of algae samples from British waters, showing considerable attention to taxonomy of species and families. This collector was evidently much more dedicated, though they were still almost certainly a hobbyist rather than a scientist by profession. Here the system of organisation is more clearly pre-meditated, perhaps even prepared according to instructions received with the book: printed labels, some with borders, denote the Latin names of series, families and individual species. Families like Delassaria appear together in groups (the same species that are named in the first album appear again here), with the user identifying in faint pencil where the missing seaweed will fit in. Where printed labels are absent, notes in ink identify the species, location and even rarity. Though several notes referring to Plymouth Harbour, Bovisand and South Devon locate the algae species on England’s South Coast, many of the names written here refer to the Scottish coasts and islands: Rothesay; Whiting Bay; Holy Island. The lengths to which the user went to obtain ‘very rare’ species of algae – assuming they were obtained by hand and not merely purchased – were not just geographical: Taxonomic accuracy is the main concern of this album, but the collector was nonetheless skilled in arranging his or her algae artistically, and most importantly making full use of the much larger space provided by this folio album, some of the specimens being very large indeed. These two albums form an attractive and exciting record of two seaweed collectors, probably when the pursuit was at the height of its popularity. Each album has its own character, the first being charmingly amateurish and artistic, the other a more hard-headed – though sadly unfinished – endeavour in collecting. See Logan, The Victorian Parlour, p. 124. 3. [ALGAE.] Brooch with algae, early twentieth century. Brooch, approximately 2 x 4 cm. overall; miniature reddish-pink algae specimen set in a light pink resin (1.2 x 1.2 cm.), in yellow metal decorative swirling design surround, functioning pin clasp. £120 4. [BIBLE – GOSPELS.] (ABU RUMI, translator, Thomas Pell PLATT, editor). An unusual example of jewellery design delicately preserving an algae; an Evangelia sancta: sub auspiciis D. Asselini rerum Gallicarum apud Aegyptios attractive piece of botanical interest collecting. procuratoris in lunguam Amharicam vertit Abu-Rumi Habessinus. London, Richard Watts for the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1824. 4to, ff. [158], Latin title and facing title in Amharic (printed in red and black), text in Amharic printed in red and black; one or two minor stains; contemporary blind-stamped calf; worn and rubbed, foot of spine chipped; from the library of Archibald Smith-Sligo (1815–1891), with bookplate. £800 First edition of the Gospels in Amharic. The translation was made by the Ethiopian monk Abu Rumi (c. 1750–c. 1819). Following extensive travels in the Middle East and India, Abu Rumi found himself, aged 50–55, in Cairo. He fell ill there but was nursed back to health by the French consul, Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville, who persuaded him to translate the Bible into Amharic. The two of them worked on the translation every Tuesday and Saturday for the next ten years (1808–1818). On completion, Asselin contacted the English missionary William Jowett of the Church Missionary Society and the Foreign Bible Society in Cairo, who purchased the 9539-page manuscript for £1250 in 1820. The manuscript was then submitted to the Orientalist Professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge before being prepared for publication by Thomas Pell Platt, Fellow of Trinity College and for several years librarian of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The Gospels appeared first, in 1824, the New Testament in 1829, and the full Bible in 1840. The latter remained the standard Amharic Bible until the Imperial Bible sponsored by Haile Selassie and published in 1960–1. Darlow & Moule 1556. WITH FOUR ORIGINAL PLAYBILLS 5. BOADEN, James. Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble, Esq. including a History of the Stage, from the Time of Garrick to the present Period … In two Volumes. London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1825. 2 vols., 8vo, pp. xl, 477, [1]; [4], 595, [1], with a mezzotint frontispiece portrait of Kemble by C. Turner after Thomas Lawrence; extra-illustrated with 27 engraved portraits and 4 playbills (1796-8); a very good copy in later nineteenth-century half calf, front joint of volume II detached. £625 First edition of a fine, discursive theatrical biography by the playwright turned biographer James Boaden; Walter Scott called it ‘grave, critical, full and laudably accurate’. After a brief early career writing gothic and historical dramas for the stage, and a bold but misguided endorsement of William Ireland’s Shakespeare forgery, Vortigern, Boaden wrote nothing after 1803 for twenty-one years, before a drastic loss of means drove him to a second career as biographer. He succeeded his life of Kemble with similar works on Mrs Siddons (1827), Mrs Jordan (1831), and Mrs Inchbald (1833). The present copy of the Memoirs is extra-illustrated with four playbills for Drury Lane productions starring Kemble and Siddons: The Gamester, 17 Oct 1796; Measure for Measure, 11 Jan 1797; Tamerlane, 2 March 1797; and The Stranger, 4 May 1798. The 27 additional portraits are mostly of Kemble and Siddons, 1780s-1860s, including some in character (as Hamlet, Rolla, etc.). EARLY PROTESTANT PRAYER-BOOK 6. BRUNFELS, Otto. Precationes Biblicae sanctoru[m] patrum, illustrium viroru[m] et mulierum utriusq[ue] Testamenti. Strasbourg, Johannes Schott, 1528. 8vo, ff. [viii], 91, [1], title printed in black and red within chiaroscuro woodcut border also printed in black and red and attributed to Hans Weiditz, woodcut on A8v, text and colophon all within wide woodcut borders of children playing, hunting and satirical scenes, trophies, grotesques, plants, animals, insects and so on (these also attributed to Hans Weiditz), woodcut device on final leaf; a few minor tears, spots and stains, but a very good copy in modern vellum with red morocco spine labels; old Quaritch description (c.