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HILL, Sir John (1716?-1775)
Eden: or, a Compleat body of Gardening, Both in Knowledge and Practice; Directing the Gardener in his Work, for every distinct Week in the Year... Illustrated with figures of about Four Hundred of the finest Shrubs, Flowers and Plants... Enlarged With the Addition of Twenty Folio Plates of new Plants, now first raised in the Royal Garden at Kew
London: printed for the Author, sold by all booksellers, 1773. Folio. Mezzotint portrait of the author by Richard Houstan after Francis Cotes, engraved frontispiece, 80 engraved plates, (12 by and after J. Hill, 1 by Hill after Jan van Huysum, 8 by C.A. Edwards, Boyce, B. Cole or others, 59 unsigned). 55 plates with fine partial or full hand-colouring by a later early-19th-century hand, 63 of the plates with some or all of the plant names neatly altered in ink to their Linnaean equivalents in a single early-19th-century hand. Expertly bound to style in half 18th-century russia gilt over marbled paper-covered boards, spine in seven compartments with raised bands, red morocco lettering-piece in the second, the others with repeat overall decorative tooling. Provenance: Hon. Booth Grey (Caverswall Castle, Staffordshire, England, armorial bookplate).
Rare second expanded edition. With twenty more botanical plates and a very fine mezzotint portrait showing 'the intelligent and determined head' (Oak Spring Flora) of Sir John Hill, 'who undeniably played a conspicuous role in the intellectual history of eighteenth-century England' (op. cit.)
This work was originally issued in 60 weekly parts between August 1756 and October 1757. The present second expanded edition is made up from the text sheets and plates of the first edition, with the addition of a mezzotint portrait of the author and an 'Appendix to Eden' consisting of 20 additional botanical plates, each figuring a single species and 4pp. of explanatory text. These additional plates originally appeared in vols. XII, XIII and XVII of Hill's The Vegetable System (1759-1786), and although unsigned are by Hill himself. The partial hand-colouring is carefully executed with great attention paid to the correct colouration of the flowers - it appears to have been carried out at the same time as the Linnaean names were added to many of the plates: the Hon. Booth Grey or his family must be considered as likely authors/artists.
The work, originally intended as a companion to the Compleat Body of Husbandry (London, 1756), was designed along very unusual lines for the period: each weekly part includes information on what should be done in the garden during the following week together with descriptions of the plants that should be at their peak at that time. In the introduction the author's intentions are made plain: "We shall treat Gardens from their Origin, Design, and first Construction, to the raising them to Perfection, and keeping them in that condition; and we shall consider, in our Course, their Products, whether of Use, Curiosity, or Beauty. These we shall describe in their several Seasons, suiting our Publications to the Time of their Appearance."
Henrey writes of Sir John Hill that "Not only was...[he] industrious and energetic, but his writings show him to have been a man of real ability and genius" (vol. II, p. 91). Unfortunately, he was also conceited, eccentric and fond of self-advertisement: traits not conducive to winning friends, and various false starts in his search for wealth and recognition led him to pursue a number of careers: apothecary, practical botanist, actor, gardener (he apparently assisted in the laying out of a botanic garden in Kew, and was gardener at Kensington Palace) and, most productively of all, miscellaneous writer (the list of his works in the D.N.B. runs to five and a half columns).
Cf. Dunthorne 129; Great Flower Books (1990) p.100; Henrey III. 805; cf. Hunt II, 559; cf. Johnston Cleveland Collections 442; cf. Nissen BBI 880; Oak Spring Flora 53; cf. Stafleu & Cowan TL2 2770
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#15087 $18,500.00 
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© 2002-2005 Donald A. Heald
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