The Farmer's Calendar Containing the Business Necessary to be Performed [owned by a friend of Charles Darwin] by Arthur Young [Mary Ann Whitby; Charles Darwin - 1805

London: Richard Phillips, 1805. Very Good. [2] pp4, xii, pp638. Mary Ann Whitby's copy of one of Arthur Young's most popular works. Half calf over marbled boards, gilt lettering and lines to spine. Mary Ann Whitby's book plate to the first blank, lettered: 'Mrs Whitby. Newlands 1832' - now Newlands Manor in Hampshire. Slight browning to paper stock, otherwise a very good copy, neat and tidy. Whitby became a correspondent of Charles Darwin on the subject of experimental breeding and the 'hereditariness' of caterpillar characteristics after she met him in Southampton. Whitby's husband Captain Thomas Whitby had been flag captain for Admiral Sir William Cornwallis and she managed and developed the Admiral's Newlands estate at Milford on Sea, eventually inheriting Newlands on his death in 1819. The great project of her middle years was an attempt to introduce commercial sericulture into England, eventually presenting a bolt of damask to Queen Victoria. Very Good 1805