An Oak Spring POMONA. A Selection of the Rare Books on Fruit in the Oak Spring Garden Library

Upperville Virginia. Oak Spring Garden Library. 1990. sq4to., 28x 24cm, First Edition, xxxii,[2],276p., numerous plates and text illustrations including many colour plates, index, matt orange book linen with black spine label and gilt apple illustration on the upper cover, fine/fine, as new, in the clear shipping wrapper (gar). ~ AN OAK SPRING POMONA is the second of a series of catalogues describing selections of the rare books and other material in the Oak Spring Garden Library, a collection formed by Mrs Paul Mellon. The Pomona describes a hundred books and manuscripts about fruit, with illustrations taken from some of the most beautiful books on the subject, as well as original drawings or paintings. The earliest book described is Bussato's Giardino di Agricoltura of 1592, the latest The Herefordsl Pomona, an encyclopaedia of apples and pears from the 1870s. In between there is a gathering of fruit books large and small: La Quintinie's Instruction pour les jardins fritiers, first published in I690 and translated by john Evelyn three years later, Duhamel's Trait‚ des Arbres?/nitiers, and nearly fifty others from France and Britain, among them Brookshaw's giant Pomona Britannica and a handful of pocket sized books of directions for grafting and cultivating the best varieties available. Sections on fruit-growing in these two countries are followed by others on fruit elsewhere in Europe (including the books of Knoop, Gallesio, and Bivort) and fruit in America (with Downing, Hovey, and several sets of nurserymen's plates) before chapters on citrus fruit (beginning with Ferrari's Hesperides of 1646), apples and pears, peaches and soft fruit, grapes, melons, and tropical fruit. Each description makes clear the background of the book concerned and its relationship to others, while a generous number of illustrations in colour and black and white help to give an impression of their contents. Many of the Oak Spring copies have particularly interesting associations, recorded in inscriptions, bookplates, or binding details, all of which are described. ... Although there is a brief bibliographical summary of each book, the background essays give the Oak Spring catalogues a historical setting that should apeal to garden historians and gardeners as well as book collectors and librarians. ... Printed at the Meriden Stinehour Press, the appearance of the books is intened to regflect the nature an quality of the contents of the Oak Spring Garden Library. (Jacket).