American Wildflowers by Hastings House Featuring Botanical Drawings by Edwin Whitefield circa 1946

{HISTORY}

First published in 1845, American Wildflowers combined the artistic talents of two 20th-century creatives - New York writer Emma C. Embury (1806-1863) and British American landscape illustrator Edwin Whitefield (1816-1892).

Republished in 1946 by Hastings House for their Americana series, American Wildflowers introduced a whole new generation to the sights and viewpoints occurring in natural world one hundred years prior. 

Unique in that many wildflower portraits showcase only the subject itself, Edwin Whitefield's drawings also included imagery in the background showing the landscape in which each flower is found. Whether his subjects are blooms springing up in meadows or along the coasts, lying low to the ground in forests, or growing tall on top of a mountain, Edwin’s sketches helped give context to the natural environment in which these strong and sturdy flowers thrived while also setting the scene in which to view them.

Comparatively, there's a freshness to Emma's style of writing that grabs your attention almost as if she were grabbing your hand and pulling you along on a hike to the locale in which Edwin’s drawings were made. She points out vistas and town names, notes changes in topography, and shares fun facts from history that correlate to each specific area. When describing the wildflowers, she does so in a conversational way, focusing on physical appearance, bloom time, range, and medicinal uses instead of exact measurements, petal counts, sun/shade preferences, or leaf vein patterns like many other science-focused field guides. 

Important in that both Emma and Edwin observed and recorded the natural environment in relation to where wildflowers appeared, in doing so they created a detailed log of what the mid-19th-century American landscape looked like before the Civil War, the second industrial revolution, and modern transportation altered many wild lands. 

In addition to floral descriptions and beautiful art, this Hastings House edition also includes nature quotes and poetry by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, William Shakespeare, and others. A big beauty of a book wrapped in a petite package, this is a lovely study of the natural landscape from a 19th-century perspective. 

Portraits of Emma Embury and Edwin Whitefield courtesy of Alan Pennie and the National Portrait Gallery. 

{SPECIAL FEATURES}

• Published in 1946
• 40 pages
• Includes original dust jacket 
• Contains decorated coverboards and endpapers
• Illustrated throughout by Edwin Whitefield with featured art by Alexander Anderson (1775-1870), one of America's first wood-engravers. 

{CONDITION}

In lovely vintage condition,  this book is clean and bright throughout with no spots, stains, or markings. The dust jacket bears some light scuffing along the creases, and there is a small light grey spot near the w in wildflowers on the front. The coverboards are bright, vibrant, and very clean, as are the interior color plates. The spine is tight, and all pages are intact.

{SIZE}

Measures 6.5" inches (length) x 5" inches (width) x .25" inches (thickness) and weighs 4 oz. 

{DONATION SUPPORTED}

This heirloom gives back! 20% of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to rare.org - an international non-profit committed to protecting, promoting, and preserving global foodways, communities, and the environment through self-sustainability and conservation.