The Common Seaweeds of the British Coast and Channel Islands;

Lovely publisher's binding. Likely second edition, a lovely copy in the publisher's pictorial binding that depicts pink seaweed and a beach scene, and with ten delicate aquatints illustrating the contents. Common Seaweeds was originally published in 1865, and some online sources describe this as the second edition, published in 1881, but it is unclear where this information originated (possibly a handwritten note in the Hathi Trust copy). Neither Worldcat nor Freeman's British Natural History Books list editions published in the 1880s.

Seaweed collecting, alongside other natural history hobbies, was a popular occupation during the Victorian era. Inspired by religious sentimentality and the Romantic Movement's reverence for nature, it was considered a wholesome way for women to engage with the outdoors, and functioned as an accomplishment indicating one's suitability for marriage and family life. Popular guides such as this one proliferated, also offering women a route to authorship and semi-professional scientific standing.

The author of the present volume, Louisa Lane Clarke (1812-1883), was the wife of a country parson and began her career as a travel and guidebook author. But she is better known 'for her later botanical work popularizing microscopy. Her first book of this nature, The Microscope (1858) was published in successive editions into the 1880s. Her The Common Seaweeds of the British Coast and Channel Islands (1865), published the year after her husband's death, plangently invokes the seaside as a place where "[we are] soothed if by sorrow or illness we have suffered"' ('Louisa Lane Clarke, Women's Travel Writing, 1780-1840: A Bio-Bibliographical Database, the University of Wolverhampton).

Second edition; aquatint frontispiece and 9 plates, 8-page publisher's ads at rear, bookseller's ticket of M. Smith of Alnwick, corner of frontispiece repaired not affecting the image, light spotting to the edges of the text block; original colour pictorial upper board and spine, the lower board being card printed with an ad, spine rolled, binding a little rubbed, dulled, and bumped, with wear at the corners and ends of the spine, very good condition; 140pp.

Cf. Freeman (British Natural History Books), 715 (first edition).