GOD'S ACRE BEAUTIFUL or the Cemeteries of the Future

London & New York: The Garden Office; Scribner and Welford, 1880. Book. Good. Hardcover. First 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 ex-library and rebacked; pp. [2], vi, [2], 128; 8 leaves of steel-engraved plates, including frontispiece, and 11 in-text cuts. Publisher's blind embossed vellum (alluding to alabaster tombs?), the spine strip, which is chipped at the head and the tail laid down onto a new white cloth spine, vellum a little marked and rubbed, more so to rear board. Contents good and tight, new end papers, but retains front blank, the title page with a perforated stamp of Louisville Free Public Library to the title page, one further perforated stamp and several small, inconspicuous black stamps of the same to the text, a few leaves a little uneven at the edges where hurriedly opened. A good ex-library copy of the very scarce first edition. 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.].