Item #105559 The Australian Gardener. Being a Complete System of Gardening as practised in Victoria, containing All Necessary Pratical [sic] Information on Leading Subjects of the Kitchen Garden & Orchard, together with a Comprehensive Calendar of the Flower Garden. SMITH, Nurserymen ADAMSON, Seedsmen and Florists.
The Australian Gardener. Being a Complete System of Gardening as practised in Victoria, containing All Necessary Pratical [sic] Information on Leading Subjects of the Kitchen Garden & Orchard, together with a Comprehensive Calendar of the Flower Garden

The Australian Gardener. Being a Complete System of Gardening as practised in Victoria, containing All Necessary Pratical [sic] Information on Leading Subjects of the Kitchen Garden & Orchard, together with a Comprehensive Calendar of the Flower Garden

Melbourne, Smith & Adamson, [February 1859 (fourth edition)].

Duodecimo (165 x 110 mm), [ii] (title page, verso blank), iv, [ii] ('Address', verso blank), 107, [3] (double-page 'Tabular View of the Kitchen Garden Calendar', last colophon) pages.

Original blind-decorated textured grey cloth lettered in gilt on the front cover; cloth a little marked and mottled, and slightly worn at the corners, with minor conservation work to the spine (mainly stabilizing the rear hinge); one opening lightly soiled (literally!); overall a very good copy with the binder's ticket of Detmold.

The title page contains the contemporary ownership details of 'F.B. Force, Melbourne, 1859' (possibly the same F.B. Force who is mentioned regularly in various Melbourne newspapers of the 1880s and 1890s as an accountant, then secretary of the Melbourne Water Supply Department, and later treasurer of the Metropolitan Board of Works). The later ownership signature of Edward Edgar Pescott (1872-1954), horticulturalist, naturalist, and author, appears on the front pastedown. The 'Address' printed in the book is an informative note from the publishers; not least, the third edition of April 1858 comprised 2000 copies, and this fourth edition is unchanged. Ferguson 15760 (this item, but noting only 'glazed pink wrappers'). See also Ferguson 15761-68; his last entry is for the 14th edition in 1896, 'Revised by F. Hamilton Brunning' and that it 'Turned into "Brunning's Australian Gardener" after 1901'). See Crittenden 28 for more along the same lines (and Ferguson 15769 and Crittenden 15 for yet more about the precursors).

Item #105559

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