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Stillingfleet, Benjamin & Coxe, W (editor).
Literary Life and Select Works of Benjamin Stillingfleet, Several of Which Have Never Before Been Published [complete in 3 volumes].
Publisher: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, London;
Date of Publication: 1811
Stock Code: 6237
FIRST EDITION. Volume I Literary Life, Volume II Part I Poetry and Natural History and Volume II Part II Natural History. Octavo in three vols; pp xix, [1], 256; vii, [1], 304; [2], 305-651, [5]. 23 plates as called for; 5 to Volume I including frontispiece portrait of Stillingfleet with facsimile signature below, and 18 plates to Vol II Part I. Full polished calf with gilt titles and decoration to spine. Marbled endpapers. Calf worn at corners with minor loss at spine tips and 2-inch loss at tail Vol II Part I. Ownership inscriptions to second blank Vol I and title pages of remaining volumes, all in the same hand in black ink. Scattered foxing; extensive damp staining throughout; some corner creasing to tips. Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702-1771), the influential English botanist, translator and author, wrote numerous works in the field of botany and his publication of 1759 “Miscellaneous Tracts” gave the Linnaean system of classification much wider recognition. Stillingfleet is also believed to be the very first “bluestocking”, a term later associated with learned females, from his attendance at London literary circles hosted by Elizabath Montagu and Elizabeth Vesey; though well connected, Stillingfleet was too poor to afford the required black hose, wearing his blue worsted pair instead. Scarce. £200.00