[HEY, REBECCA]. Sylvan Musings; or, the Spirit of the Woods. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849.
NEW EDITION; leather-bound, hardcover, octavo (20.5cm x 14cm x 3.5cm), pp. xvi, 284. English text, with illustrations throughout. Stunningly bound in contemporary full morocco gilt, all page edges gilt, yellow endpapers, 23 superb hand-coloured botanical illustrations drawn by the author and engraved on steel by William Clark, finished to a very high standard with rich hand-colour. Printed by Spottiswoode, London. Condition: VERY GOOD. Binding tight and secure, the hinges and joints perfectly intact. Covers beautifully preserved. Contents complete, with some foxing to prelims, the plates very well-preserved indeed. Without previous ownership markings. Scarce thus.
Notes: The new edition of this rare companion volume to Moral of Flowers. Rebecca Hey's impressive encyclopedia of trees, detailing the essential information of thirty six trees, the text highlighted with Hey's own botanical poems and paintings. The book covers woodland trees and includes plates of mostly European trees such as the oak, elm, ash, beech, lime, birch, holly, willow, yew, hazel, cherry, cedar, etc. The botanical illustrations include fruit, berries, blossom, leaves, catkins, etc. (A few exotic trees like the fig, banyan, palm and sandal tree are described in the text).
"A source of great additional interest has been the presentation of the drawings for the illustration of the work, which the author herself has ventured to execute from nature, and which she trusts will be found botanically correct." (from the Preface).
Rebecca Hey (1797-1859) was an English poet and botanical artist. She was born Rebecca Roberts in Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1797, and married apothecary-surgeon William Hey in 1821. Her first book Moral of Flowers, a collection of poems and botanical art, was a success and reprinted several times. She followed it up with a second work Sylvan Musings, 1837, illustrated with her own botanical art, again engraved by William Clark. She wrote two further books of poetry, Recollections of the Lakes 1841 and Holy Places 1859.
Little is known of William Clark who worked as a botanical artist, draughtsman and engraver to the Horticultural Society of London in the 1820s and 1830s. In addition to the botanical plates in Flora Conspicua, he also contributed to Stephenson and Churchill's Medical Botany 1827-31, John Lindley's Pomological Magazine 1828, Robert Sweet's British Flower Garden 1838, and Transactions of the Horticultural Society.
