The Gardener's Assistant: Practical and Scientific. A Guide to the Formation and Management of the Kitchen, Fruit, and Flower Gardens, and the Cultivation of Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers; with Select Descriptive Lists of the Best Varieties in Each Department, And a Copious Calendar of Garden Operations; New Edition, Revised and Extended

London: Blackie and Son, 1878. Cloth. Very good. Small 4to; 956pp + 4 advertisements; green pebbled cloth over beveled-edged boards, black stamped decoration, gilt-stamped spine; brown glazed endpapers; heavy book, binding holding tight; color frontispiece plus 11 additional color inserted plates and 20 plates in black and white precede text, all numbered; b&w illustrations and tables throughout text; bookplate to rear pastedown; damp staining to bottom edge, scattered foxing to the first 15 pages as well as some of the tissue guards and borders of the plates; very good.


$250.00. Extensive discourse on gardens from planting designs to tools to plants.
Bookplate of the Rt. Honorable William Henry Smith (1825-1891) of England, located on the rear pastedown and inserted upside-down. Smith was instrumental in the family business of W.H. Smith as a book and newspaper seller. He was elected to Parliament in 1868 and promoted to First Lord of Admiralty without seafaring experience. It is said that he was possibly the model for the H.M.S. Pinafore operetta character, Sir Joseph Porter. He later served as Secretary of State for War, First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Commons. Smith's crest of a shield, with an extended arm holding oak leaves, appears on the bookplate with the title "Deo Non Fortuna Fretus" or loosely translated, "From God, not from Luck".
Sold along with the publisher's dummy book.