Canadian Wild Flowers [Wildflowers] (2nd Cdn Edition)

Montreal: Printed and Published by John Lovell St. Nicholas Street, 1869. 2nd Edition. Hard Cover. Good. 2nd edition. Large folio (14.5"x11"). (3), [6]-86pp. 10 full-page colour plates of paintings of Canadian wild flowers (with tissue guards). Title page is also decorated with colour flowers. Text has detailed descriptions of thirty different flowers. Original green cloth boards, with gilt titles and decoration to front, blind stamped titles to rear, a little soiled. Professionally re-backed. All edges gilt. Plates V and VI are reversed in sequence. Endpapers and paste-downs are dark brown. Pages browning slightly at edges, boards darkened on front corners, a few small stains and surface scratches. Previous owners name of front end paper.

For this 2nd edition book, Agnes FitzGibbon created and paid for eleven new stones at Burland L'Africain Chromolithographers, Montreal. The plates were numbered I-X, and the designs of II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII were reversed for aesthetic reasons. FitzGibbon painted 5,500 more sheets with transparent washes; stencils sped the pace of the work. Overall a good copy of this beautiful book.

Following are the 10 hand-coloured illustrations:

Plate I - Indian Tulip, Showy Orchis, Painted Cup, Scarlet Cup, Cone Flower Plate II - Sweet Wintergreen, One Flowered Pyrola, Flowering Raspberry, Speedwell - American Brooklime Plate III - Adders-Tongue, Dog-Toothed Violet, White Trillium - Death Flower, Rock Columbine Plate IV - Squirrel Corn, Purple Trillium - Death Flower - Birth Root, Wood Geranium - Cranes Bill, Chickweed Wintergreen Plate V - Yellow Lady's Slippers, Large Blue Flag, Small Cranberry Plate VI - Wild Orange Lily, Canadian Harebell, Showy Lady's Slipper Plate VII - Early Wild Rose, Pentstemon Beard-Tongue Plate VIII - Sweet Scented Water Lily, Yellow Pond Lily

Plate IX, Pitcher Plant Plate X, Liver Leaf - Wind Flower, Bellwort, Wood Anemone, Spring Beauty.

Excerpts from the preface of the book reads as follows:

...First, the designs - all the flowers having been copied from Nature's Own Book, by Mrs. Fitzgibbon - then the subsequent grouping and lithographing on stone by her own hand, and finally the colouring of each separate plate - a gigantic effort to be executed by one person.  With a patriotic pride in her native land, Mrs. F. was desirous that the book should be entirely of Canadian production, without any foreign aid, and thus far her design has been carried out; whether successfully or not, remains for the public to decide.  ... And finally it was at last agreed that the Book of Canadian Wild Flowers should be the work of Mrs. Fitzgibbon, and the descriptions of the plants as delineated by her hand, should be selected and adapted to suit the subjects of the Plates from Mrs. Traill's MS....  Toronto, December, 1868.  C.P. Traill.