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Flora Historica · British Flowers, Gardening & Symbolism · Henry Phillips · 1829
A handsome early nineteenth-century two-volume set exploring the botanical, historical, literary, and symbolic associations of ornamental flowers cultivated in Britain across the seasons.
Two Volumes · Attractive Period Binding · Garden History, Botany & Romantic Naturalism
Bibliographic Details
Author: Phillips, Henry (a botanist, horticultural writer and landscape gardener from Brighton, c.1779–1840)
Title: Flora Historica, or, The Three Seasons of the British Parterre Historically and Botanically Treated: with Observations on Planting to Secure a Regular Succession of Flowers from the Commencement of Spring to the End of Autumn
Place of Publication: London
Publisher: E. Lloyd and Son
Date: 1829
Pagination: xlvii, [1], 333, [2]; viii, 424
Illustrations: Text only
Binding: Contemporary green leather over marbled boards, spines with gilt bands and title labels, marbled edges and endpapers
Size: 8vo (each volume approx. 19.6 x 12.5 cm)
Provenance: Contemporary manuscript horticultural note on colophon page at rear of Vol. II
Condition
Very Good condition. Bindings solid and attractive, with only minor edge-wear and light scuffing to boards. Blank endpapers in both volumes somewhat age-toned and lightly foxed, with a few small spots of foxing to title pages. The principal point to note is that the original silk page markers in both volumes have left brown offset marks to their respective pages (pp. 190–191 in Vol. I and pp. 146–147 in Vol. II). Otherwise, the text is clean and reasonably bright throughout. Please consult gallery images or request a fuller condition report.
Description
A delightful and increasingly desirable early nineteenth-century work at the intersection of botany, horticulture, literary culture, and garden history. Henry Phillips’ Flora Historica is much more than a gardening manual: it is a richly textured meditation on the flower garden as a place of science, symbolism, memory, and cultivated beauty.
Organised around the successive flowering seasons of Spring, Summer, and Autumn, the work brings together observations on the cultivation and flowering habits of ornamental plants with a wide range of historical and literary material. Phillips draws freely on classical mythology, antiquarian lore, poetry, historical anecdote, and botanical commentary, creating a work that is as culturally revealing as it is horticulturally useful.
The result is a wonderfully characteristic production of the Romantic period, in which flowers are treated not merely as decorative specimens but as carriers of symbolic, emotional, and historical meaning. Plants such as the rose, lily, tulip, narcissus, and many others are explored not only in terms of their growth and seasonality, but through the stories, legends, and associations that had accumulated around them across centuries of European thought.
Phillips himself was an intriguing figure—part horticultural writer, part landscape entrepreneur, and part ambitious visionary. Active in Brighton during its great Regency expansion, he became involved in several notable garden and conservatory schemes, and is perhaps best remembered today for his spectacularly ill-fated Athenaeum project, the great domed botanical structure that collapsed just before opening. That mixture of intellectual curiosity and grand horticultural ambition is very much present in this work.
As a physical object, this set is also particularly appealing: well-bound in attractive contemporary green leather over marbled boards, and retaining a contemporary manuscript horticultural note, which adds a pleasing trace of period use and engagement.
Notes
Flora Historica remains one of the more engaging and unusual botanical books of its period, appealing not only to collectors of garden literature, but also to readers interested in Romantic naturalism, symbolism, and the cultural history of plants.
Its broad interdisciplinary character gives it a readership far beyond pure botany, and copies in appealing period binding are increasingly sought after.
A handsome and thoughtful two-volume set, ideal for collectors of botanical literature, garden history, horticulture, and nineteenth-century cultural writing.
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