Beschreibung:

JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784) – EVELYN, John (1620-1706). Kalendarium Hortense; or, The Gardner’s Almanac, directing what he is to do monthly throughout the year . The ninth edition. London: George Huddleston, 1699.
JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784) – EVELYN, John (1620-1706). Kalendarium Hortense; or, The Gardner’s Almanac, directing what he is to do monthly throughout the year . The ninth edition. London: George Huddleston, 1699. 8º (155 x 92mm). Title page and caption title for each month in red and black, engraved figures of a greenhouse on M7v. (Lacks additional engraved title, some quires browned, marginal waterstains.) Old calf, front cover inscribed “Evelyn/ on /Gardening/ Dr. Sam. Johnson” (spine and board edges worn, covers slightly bowed). Provenance : Samuel Johnson (his signature at head of title) – Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, tenth baronet (1787-1871; his signed inscription, 'bought at the sale of Mrs Thrale’s library at Streatham 1816,' on front blank) -- quotation from Cowper in an unknown hand at the foot of B4, and some pencil scoring of Cowley’s poem 'The Garden'. SAMUEL JOHNSON’S COPY of this popular work by Evelyn, first printed in 1664, originally part of the unpublished Elysium Britannicum . While seldom thought of as a gardener, in later years Johnson did have a garden at his house at 8 Bolt Court. He wrote to Mrs Thrale, 14 August 1780, reporting: 'I have three bunches of grapes on a vine in my garden; at least, that is all I will now tell of my garden" (quoted in Boswell, Life , ed. G.B. Hill. ii. 427n). Boswell records how (18 April 1783) 'he placed himself on one of the stone-seats at his garden-door,' and spoke like a knowing authority on walled gardens, orchards and hothouses ( Life . iv. 203-06). The Kalendarium Hortense appears not to have been itemised in Squibb’s catalogue of the Streatham Park sale, 8 May 1816. Its purchaser, Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, was elected as Tory MP for Devon in 1812, and reputedly spent £80,000 on election expenses during his political career. His wife, Lydia Elizabeth (d. 1856), was the only daughter of Henry Hoare head partner of the banking firm of Messrs Hoare. The family home was at Killerton, Broad Clyst. How long the book remained in the same family ownership is unrecorded. It recently came to light among a number of volumes with the bookplate of Oliver Nowell Chadwyck-Healey (1886-1960), and was possibly also in his library.