F. P. Chaumeton
Paris: C. L. F. Panckoucke, 1814-1820.

Monumental early nineteenth-century French work on medicinal and edible plants, authored by Francois Pierre Chaumeton, Jean Louis Marie Poiret, and Jean-Baptitse-Joseph-Anne-Cesar Turbas de Chamberet. The first six volumes, beginning with Absinthe comprise 360 hand-coloured stipple engravings by Ernestine Panckoucke (the publisher’s wife) and Pierre-Jean-Francois Turpin, produced at the height of the French stipple engraving tradition pioneered by Pierre-Joseph Redoute, a fantastic example of early nineteenth-century botanical art publishing. The final two volumes complete the work with extensive text on pharmacological uses and additional plates, including two large engraved folding tables, forming a comprehensive encyclopaedia of materia medica as understood at the end of the Napoleonic era. NISSEN BBI 349. This copy with the additional corrected description of plate XXI. From the collection of English horticulturalist, Maria Theresa Earle, with her bookplate in each volume, also the plate, name and address of American Rhododendron collector Dr. Paul Jay Bowman. This edition unrecorded in Australian collections, with only one institutional holding of any edition located, the 6-volume second edition (1828-1833) at the University of Melbourne.