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First edition of this celebrated introduction to microscopy by one of the foremost popularizers of Victorian science. A substantially expanded version of Ward's 1858 work, A World of Wonders Revealed by the Microscope, it is copiously illustrated with colour plates and engravings based on her own meticulous artwork. Gifted a microscope by her father when she was 18, Ward (1827-1869) "took a keen interest in natural history and astronomy from childhood. Her enthusiasm led to serious study and she produced microscope slides and skilled and accurate illustrations, both for her own work and for others. Ward put on exhibitions for her family and friends and hand-printed her own booklets" (Matthews). Microscope Teachings evolved from her first book, Sketches with the Microscope (1857), which was published locally in 250 copies in her native Ireland. After its favourable reception, the London publishers Groombridge and Sons republished it as A World of Wonders Revealed by the Microscope (1858). From here, the text of Ward's bestseller split in two and significantly increased in length to become the uniformly bound pairing of Telescope Teachings (1859) and this title. Ward "takes her place among the popularizers of science who, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, did much to encourage a knowledge of, and interest in, the natural world among the general public, and thus to stimulate the advances in science and technology that marked the industrial revolution" (ODNB). At the request of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, she was one of three women given special dispensation to receive the Royal Astronomical Society's Monthly Notices, the others on the mailing list being Mary Somerville and Queen Victoria. Ward died aged 42 after being thrown from a steam-powered automobile invented by the sons of her cousin William Parsons, third Earl of Rosse. Parsons keenly encouraged Ward's interest in microscopy; she was 17 when he built the telescope known as the "Leviathan of Parsonstown" at Birr Castle, which remained the world's largest telescope (in terms of aperture size) until the early 20th century. Provenance: Robin de Beaumont (1926-2023), a distinguished antiquarian bookseller and one of the leading experts in Victorian decorative cloth bindings, with his bookplate. Clare Matthews, "Microscopy in Print: Books from the Collection of Gerard L'Estrange Turner", Whipple Library online exhibition, University of Cambridge, 2015. Small quarto. Engraved colour frontispiece, 16 like plates (5 tissue-guarded), numerous diagrams within text. With 4 pp. of publisher's advertisements at rear. Original green diagonal bead-grain cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, double fillet frame and microscope centrepiece stamped in gilt to front cover, identical design stamped in blind to rear cover, cream coated endpapers, gilt edges, binder's ticket of Edmonds & Remnants on rear pastedown. Neat ownership initials in blue pencil to front pastedown. Spine ends and corners bumped and gently rubbed, shallow knock to lower edge of rear cover, cloth notably clean and gilt bright, contents foxed, leaf H4 vertically creased: a very good copy.
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