New Illustrations of Zoology; containing fifty coloured plates of new, curious and non-descript Birds, with a few Quadrupeds, Reptiles and Insects...

London: For B. White, 1776. (viii), 136, 50 hand-coloured engraved plates. . HB. 4to, contemporary full leather, gilt border to both boards, corners neatly restored, rebacked in sympathetic style with raised bands, gilt tooling to compartments, red leather title piece, original marbled endpapers retained. Some offsetting to plates. Provenance: From the library of Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), biographer, essayist, and member of the Bloomsbury group, with his small bookplate, designed by his lover and modernist painter, Dora Carrington (1893-1932). Following the death of Strachey (and of Carrington) the book passed to Ralph and Frances Partridge (whose names are written to the fly-leaf). Also with earlier bookplates of R.M. Trench Chiswell and Mary Constance Butler.. First Edition. English and French titles together with brief letterpress descriptions in both languages, written principally by Thomas Pennant. Pennant had previously employed Brown for two of the plates in his British Zoology. 42 of the delicately coloured plates depict birds (sometimes together with insects), 5 mammals, 2 insects and 1 a reptile. Brown's plates for the present work were executed from animals that had not previously been drawn in the collections belonging to Marmaduke Tunstall and other private collectors, and from the collections of the British Museum and the Royal Society. However, some of the plates are copies from drawings which the former Dutch governor of Ceylon, Gideon Loten, commissioned during his stay in Java and Ceylon; these drawings were made from living models, chiefly by the native artist P.C. de Bevere. The work was published by Gilbert White's brother, the publisher Benjamin White. Peter Brown (fl. 1776) was a Dane by birth, and was also known as a flower painter, exhibiting at the Royal Academy from 1770 to 1791. Anker, 72; Fine Bird Books, p. 62; Nissen IVB, 151..