GOD'S ACRE BEAUTIFUL or the Cemeteries of the Future [INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR]

London: John Murray, 1883. Book. Very Good. Hardcover. Signed by Author(s). Third Edition. Royal 8vo (22.5 x 14.5 cm). An important and rare book in which Robinson advocates cremation over burial, at a time when cremation was essentially illegal and a major public taboo. This copy is inscribed by the author to the half-title page, "H. G. Spicer from the author June 7th 1910". [Henry Spicer - paper merchant and local philanthropist. He gifted in 1923, a playground consisting of a large sandpit to Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster, also corresponded on plants and gifted bulbs to Royal Parks etc.]; pp. vi, [2], 152; 8 leaves of plates including 5 original, woodbury-type mounted photographs, and three steel-engravings, including frontispiece, the photographs and frontispiece with original tissue guards, and 14 in-text cuts. Publisher's blind embossed vellum (alluding to alabaster tombs?), vellum lightly marked and a little rubbed to spine. Contents clean and tight, original dark brown coated end-papers with bookplate of H. G. & G. M. Spicer to front paste-down, tissue-guards a little toned to edges. A very good copy inscribed by the author. In this book Robinson "...applies his gardening aesthetic to urban churchyards and cemeteries. His campaign included trying to win an unwilling public to the advantages of cremation over burial, and he quite freely shared unsavoury stories of what happened in certain crowded graveyards. He was instrumental in the founding of Golders Green Crematorium and designed the gardens there, which replaced the traditional Victorian mourning graveyard with open lawn, flowerbeds, and woodland gardens." Davies. [Bibliographic note: despite three editions, it is the rarest of Robinson's books, and is scarcely offered; at the time of listing, no other copies were available on the internet. The first edition of 1880 and second edition of 1882 were published by The Garden Office in London (and Scribner and Welford in New York), whereas the third edition of 1883 was published by John Murray in London (and S. & W. in New York). All editions share the same vellum binding and ostensibly the same content, but the second and third editions include an additional (a second) appendix and an index, adding 24 pages (including three in-text woodcut Illustrations), thus a text of 152 rather than 128 pages. The text, pagination, and type-setting up to page 128 are virtually the same in all editions, but with some subtle differences, e.g. in the first edition, the verso of the TP carries a cut of an urn and a Washington Irving quote, in the second edition it is blank and in the third edition it carries adverts for other Robinson Titles. Additionally, and more importantly the suite of plates is different: the first edition consists of eight steel-engraved plates, whereas the second and third editions share the first three steel-engraved plates of the first edition (including frontispiece), but the latter five plates have been replaced with mounted woodbury-type photographs.].