COLOR PLATES. An Introduction to the Science of Botany, Chiefly Extracted from the Works of Linnaeus; to which are added, Several New Tables and Notes, and a Life of the Author, corrected and enlarged by James Lee, son and successor to the Author by Lee, James - 1810

London: F.C. Rivington and J. Rivington et al., 1810. 4th edition (stated).

1810 BEST EDITION OF FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF LINNAEUS' PHILOSOPHIA BOTANICA, WITH 12 SUPERB HAND COLORED ENGRAVINGS.

8 1/2 inches tall hardcover, recent green buckram binding, gilt title to spine, portrait frontis of author with offsetting to title page, xxiv, 580 pp, 12 hand-colored copper plate engravings with facing descriptive text, blank leaf with poems inscribed on both sides in a fine contemporary hand: Anacreontic by Arthur Moore, and The Swiss Cow Herds Song by J Montgomery. Covers fine, scattered foxing to initial and end pages. Very good. This expanded 4th edition revised by Lee's son is the only edition with colored plates.

CARL LINNAEUS (1707 – 1778) was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy".

JAMES LEE (1715-1795) was an English botanist and nurseryman. While Carl Linnaeus's new classification of plants (Philosophia Botanica) had been published in 1751, an English translation did not appear until 1760, translated by the botanist James Lee. An Introduction to Botany immediately made Lee a famous name in botanic circles. Lee's reputation also brought many visitors to his nursery, the Vineyard, at Hammersmith. The nursery specialized in exotic plants from Africa and the Americas. In 1789, due to his specialist knowledge in exotic species, Lee began to assist William Aiton in producing a new catalogue of the plants grown in the botanical gardens at Kew.

SAM GEORGE, in Linnaeus in Letters and the Cultivation of the Female Mind, wrote, "In the eighteenth century many botanical texts were specifically addressed to the female sex. The language and arguments of botany, centring around reproduction and sexuality, experience and science, classification and order,introspective solitude and public debate, become inextricably implicated inarguments about women's intellectual and moral faculties and their general social status. Linnaeus developed an anthropomorphic imagery for flowers, which is borne out in English adaptations of his Latin works. James Lee's Introductionto Botany (offered here) was the first work to present the sexual system to British readers; here 'male' stamens are 'husbands','female' pistils 'wives' and sexual union a 'marriage'. Flowers lacking stamens or anthers are termed 'eunuchs' and, not surprisingly, the removal of anthers is 'castration'. This boudoir version of botany unleashed onto the public imagination the idea that plant reproduction was analogous to human sexuality."