Hortus Veitchii.: A History of the Rise and Progress of the Nurseries of Messrs. James Veitch and Sons, together with an Account of the Botanical Collectors and Hybridists Employed by Them and a List of the Most Remarkable of their Introductions.

London: James Veitch & Sons Limited,, 1906. First and limited edition, one of an unstated number of copies "printed for private circulation only". This is a handsomely illustrated history of the most prominent 19th-century horticultural firm in Britain, with accounts of their most famous botanical collecting explorers and hybridists. It is an essential reference work on plants introduced to Britain during the Victorian era. The Veitch nursery empire was founded about 1800 by John Veitch (1752-1839) and was the first businesses to employ professional plant-hunters. The book "gives a detailed account of the family business and of the men that the firm sent to South America, Japan, China, and India during the period 1840-1906, including distinguished plant finders such as William Lobb, his brother Thomas, who first introduced various types of orchids from India to Britain for cultivation, and Richard Pearce, who brought back tuberous begonias from South America" (introduction to the Cambridge edition). Among the most famous collectors who travelled to China, the book mentions E. H. Wilson (1876-1930), "who coined the phrase 'China-mother of Gardens' and... introduced from four expeditions there between 1899 and 1911 over a thousand plants apparently new to the western world" (Lancaster, foreword). Also mentioned is Augustine Henry (1857-1930), whose "discoveries in the provinces of Hubei and Sichuan, particularly in the vicinity of the famous Yangtze Gorges, were responsible in large part for the renaissance of Chinese plant introductions to British gardens" (ibid.). Folio. Original purple half morocco, spine lettered in gilt, marbled and gilt paper sides and endpapers, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Housed in the publisher's purple cloth solander box. With photogravure frontispiece and 49 similar plates, all with tissue guards, title page printed in red and black. Occasional spot of foxing to contents, otherwise clean. A near-fine copy in the somewhat rubbed and sunned solander box, with a couple of short splits, but sound. Roy Lancaster, "Foreword", in Sue Shepard, ed., Seeds of Fortune. A Gardening Dynasty, 2012; James Herbert Veitch, Hortus Veitchii, Cambridge Library Collection, 2011.