Beautifully bound Victorian book on insects

NEWMAN, Edward.

A Familiar Introduction to the History of Insects; Being a new and greatly improved edition of the Grammar of Entomology.

Description

London, John van Voorst, 1841. Second edition, an expanded and improved version of the text originally published in 1835 as the Grammar of Entomology. This copy is very handsomely bound, and the text is copiously illustrated with delicate engravings. Though nominally a manufacturer, Edward Newman (1801-1876) devoted much of his leisure time to natural history, in particular insects. He was a founder of the Entomological Club and housed its collections and library in his residence, and he served as editor of the Entomological Magazine. He was a founder of the Entomological Society of London, serving as president between 1853 and 1854, and was elected to the Linnean Society, the Zoological Society, and the Royal Microscopical Society, as well as a number of foreign scientific societies. 'Newman's publications up to 1838 focused on entomological subjects. His first paper, in 1831, "Polyommatus argiolus, melitaea euphrosyne and selene", was published in the Magazine of Natural History, and a year later his more important work, Sphinx vespiformis: an Essay, appeared; it was regarded as an attempt at a new system of classification. In 1832 he began an anonymous series of notes in the Magazine of Natural History, which were reprinted in 1849 as The Letters of Rusticus, chiefly discussing the bird and insect life of Surrey. His pseudonym, Rusticus, was a secret known not even by his closest friend, the naturalist Edward Doubleday (1810–1849). In 1835 he published the Grammar of Entomology, of which a more extended second edition was issued in 1841, under the title A Familiar Introduction to the History of Insects; this was later issued as The Insect Hunters, or, Entomology in Verse (1858)' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Second edition; 8vo (21.5 x 13.5 cm); engravings throughout the text, ownership signature partially removed from head of title page, contents lightly toned with occasional small spots; late nineteenth-century brown half calf, spine gilt in compartments, marbled sides and endpapers, top edge gilt, bookplate, spine faded, excellent condition; 288pp.