BRADLEY (Richard):
New Improvements of Planting and Gardening, Both Philosophical and Practical. In Three Parts.... To which is added, That scarce and valuable Tract, intitled, Herefordshire- Orchards. The Fifth Edition, with an Appendix, treating several Matters omitted in the former impressions. Illustrated with Copper Plates.
London: Printed for W. Mears, and Sold by J. Knapton, G. Strahan, R. Gosling, J.Osborn and T. Longman, J. Hooke, T. Batley, G. Rivington, and D. Browne. M. DCC. XXVI. 1726. 8vo, 190 x 105 mms., pp. [xvi], [3] 4 - 296, 305 - 608 [609 - 631 Index, 632 adverts], title-page in red and black, one full paged engraved plate at page 11, one folding engrave plate at page [61], and a fragment of folding plate at page [488], with various ownership inscriptions, notably that of John Woodward 1665/1668 - 1728) on the top margin of the title-page (see below), bound in contemporary calf, neatly rebacked, hinges strengthened with cloth, no leaves before title-page, which it itself soiled and slightly frayed,some worming affecting text from page 160 to 200, last ten leaves water-stained at upper corner corners and edges worn. The author of the book, Richard Bradley (1688?-1732), and John Woodward (1665/1668-1728), the scientist and physician, both made enormous contributions to the University of Cambridge in the early eighteenth century, and were prominent contemporaries in the field of natural philosophy. In 1692, "Woodward was appointed Gresham Professor of Physic and in 1693 elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1695 he was made an M.D. by Archbishop Tenison and by Cambridge University. In 1702 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians" (Wikipedia). Woodward ultimately became a foundational figure at the University of Cambridge. He provided the thousands of specimens that became the Woodwardian Museum, and he created and endowed the professorial chair termed the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology at Cambridge in 1728. His library was legendary, but ESTC shows at most two books noted as having been owned by a John Woodward (ESTC S101762 and ESTC S116209), and it is unclear whether either was owned by the John Woodward who was the famous scientist and physician. Woodward was not only eminent, however. He was also notorious. He was a bad boy of the Royal Society. He was kicked off the council in 1710 for insulting Hans Sloane. He has also "been credited as a founder of plant physiology and the discovery of 'transpiration' " (Oxford DNB). Without question, he was one of the most important early collectors of fossils in Britain: the Oxford DNB notes that Woodward was a "real pioneer in the world of museology. … The fossils were left at his death, in their original cabinets, to Cambridge University, along with an endowed professorship, the first in Britain, both of which bequests are described in his will." In her Concise History of the University of Cambridge (1996), Elisabeth Leedham-Green speaks of Woodward and Bradley in the same breath: "The first professor of botany, Richard Bradley, was appointed in 1726, and endeavoured strenuously, as he was bound, to raise funds for a physic garden. His reputation was mishandled by John and Thomas Martyn who succeeded him, but his published course of lectures and his other works have since been found worthy of respect. John Woodward, MD, who was in 1728 to found the chair in geology and endow it with his collections, demonstrated in his Essay towards a natural history of the earth that he had recognised the existence of different strata in the earth's crust, although he failed to make any sense out of them" (p. 94). This is ESTC N50685 and extremely rare, with the ESTC cataloguers finding only three copies: Oxford (All Souls College, not Bodleian) in the United Kingdom; and Harvard and Huntington in the United States, though the copy at Huntington is so imperfect that it consists of the "appendix only".
John Price Antiquarian Books
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Keywords: gardening plants prose