Books and Manuscripts

Martyn, Thomas
Aranei, or a Natural History of Spiders...
London: Thomas Martyn, At his Academy for Illustrating and Painting Natural History, 1793. Two parts in one volume. First edition. 4to. (ii), ii, vii, (i), 70; (iv), 31, (1) pp. Illustrated with 28 engraved plates hand-colored by the author, as well as two engraved title-pages; without the engraved frontispiece and two numismatic plates. Contemporary three-quarter straight-grain crimson morocco over marbled paper-covered boards, front joint worn, corners bumped and worn, boards rubbed, spine soiled, top and bottom of front joint cracked; all edges untrimmed; armorial book-plate of Henry Rogers Broughton, 2nd Baron Fairhaven, on front paste-down; front hinge slightly worn; manuscript note in pencil on front paste-down, “Select Copy Col'd by the Author”, with an autograph note, initialed and dated “T.M--1797” at bottom of first plate, “A Select Painted Copy”; ownership signature, dated 1858, at top of front blank; scattered foxing to text; light soiling and foxing to plates.

Scarce first edition of English natural history draughtsman Thomas Martyn's work on spiders, being an enlarged and revised edition of Charles Clerck's work on Swedish spiders (1757) and Eleazar Albin's treatise on English spiders (1737). Illustrated with 28 finely engraved plates by Basire, Carwitham and Smith. This copy includes a note at front indicating that it was hand-colored by Martyn himself, and with what appears to be his initialed note at the bottom of the first plate attesting to this.