The Ladies' Flower-Garden [Includes: Ornamental Annuals; Ornamental Bulbous Plants; Ornamental Perennials; British Wild Flowers; Ornamental Greenhouse Plants.

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VG, 5 volumes in 6, 1840-1860, 304 (complete) hand coloured plates, depicting 1,582 flowers! Ornamental Annuals, 1840, 1st ed, 48 pls (hand coloured), lacks half title, [5], (viii-xvi), [1], (ii-iv), [1], 2-272 pp, 207*269 mm, ink name to verso TP. Ornamental Bulbous Plants, 1841, 1st ed, 58 pls (hand coloured), lacks h/t, [3], (vi-x), [1], 2-270 pp, 251*269 mm, marbled endpapers. Ornamental Perennials, 1843 & 1844, 1st ed, 96 pls (in total & hand coloured), half title, [2], [3], (iv-x), [1], 2-190 pp, 45 pls; half title, [5], (vi-x), [1], 51 pls, book marks to fpds & ink name to feps, a.e.g. British Wild Flowers, 1846, 1st ed, 60 pls (hand coloured), lacks h/t, [3], (vi-xvi), [1], 2-311 pp, 216*274 mm. Ornamental Greenhouse Plants, 1860, 3rd ed, 42 pls (hand coloured), half title, [5], (vi-xii), [1], 2-215 pp, 231*299 mm, bookplate to fpd. All in modern dark green half morocco, raised bands, gilt tooling & titles, over various boards - Annuals in contemp. green cloth; Bulbous in contemp green cloth. Perennials both vols in modern green marbled boards; Wild Flowers in modern green marbled boards; Greenhouse Plants in contemp embossed green cloth with gilt plant. Very occasional light spotting, but a set rarely found in such clean condition. Loudon, writer on botany and magazine editor, who when production of her husband's Arboretum (1838) saddled the family with debts of £10,000, turned again to authorship, and tapped the ready Victorian market for books popularizing horticulture, botany, and natural history. Instructions in Gardening for Ladies (1840) was hugely successful; 1350 copies were sold on the day of publication alone. The Ladies' Flower-Garden of Ornamental Annuals (1840), the first in a much-reprinted series of informative illustrated books, was followed by others about bulbs, greenhouse plants, and perennials. See ODNB.