Glaucus; or the Wonders of the Shore

London: MacMillan and Co., 1878. xi, 245, 12 col plates, text illus. . HB. 8vo, cont. half calf, gt, teg, marbled endpapers. Slight fading to spine. Vg. Book-plate of Henry Lloyd Gibbs.. Sixth edition. This work, first published in 1855, reflects the growing interest in marine natural history during the mid-Nineteenth Century. It contains 12 attractive chromolithographic plates of animals found on the seashores of southern Britain. Kingsley spent time in Torbay, south Devon, and was an admirer and friend of P.H. Gosse, who did much to encourage a popular interest in sea-shore life through books such as, <i>The Aquarium</i> and <i>A Naturalist's Rambles on the Devonshire Coast</i>. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), better known as author of <i>The Water Babies</i>, <i>Hereward the Wake</i> and <i>Westward Ho!</i>, was a Church of England priest, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He was also an enthusiastic natural historian and a friend and correspondent of Charles Darwin..