Familiar Wild Flowers Fifth Series F. Edward Hulme Natural History,Victorian Decorative

Bright attractive copy of the fifth series of Familiar Wild Flowers by F. Edward Hulme with 40 colour plates, each with an intact tissue guard published in 1895. These are watercolour illustrations and all present, bright and clear. There are also many in text line illustrations and chapter heading drawings. This is the highly sought after early edition with the decorative cover and spine. Later editions retained the beautiful plates and tissue guards but were much slimmer with plainer decoration. The gilt title and flower illustration on the cover is bright and clear. The green of the cloth boards is bright and strong. The spine ends are crushed and the corners are barely rubbed at the absolute extremities. The edge of the text block is stained red and this is bright to the edge but a little grubby at the top. The spine has a clear title but is a little darkened and dulled as you might expect in a book of this age. The spine ends are crushed. Internally, the book is clean and bright. The occasional foxing spot. Some cracking but all of the pages are present and secure. As you can see the back board is partially detached from the text block, there is also minor cracking to the front board. The whole is a little tight and brittle as you might expect in a book of this age but all present and secure.