GENERAL ZOOLOGY, OR SYSTEMATIC NATURAL HISTORY (15 Volumes, Published 1800-1811)

Various pp. Full-leather hardcover bindings, with gilt lettering and gilt tooling to spines. Marbled edges. Various plates throughout, collated and complete. Condition: Good. Sections of the spines on some of the volumes are missing. Light rubbing, scuffing and slight edgewear to boards and spines. Previous owner’s bookplate and binder’s label to each of the pastedowns. Slight foxing to some of the pages. Some offsetting to pages facing the plates. Text and plates are overall clean and clear. Some worming to front board, front pastedown and endpaper and first few pages of vol 2, one spot of worming to pages all the way through pages to rear, but towards bottom edges, so no text or plates affected. Similar worming without damage to rear board, endpaper, pastedown and last few pages of vol 5. Each volume is well bound. Please also see photos.

Please note: This lot consists of volumes 1-14 and 16 only.

George Kearsley Shaw (1751 – 1813) was an English botanist and zoologist. Shaw was born at Bierton, Buckinghamshire, and was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, receiving his M.A. in 1772. He took up the profession of medical practitioner. In 1786, he became the assistant lecturer in botany at the University of Oxford. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1789. In 1791, Shaw became assistant keeper of the natural history department at the British Museum, succeeding Edward Whitaker Gray as keeper in 1806. Shaw published one of the first English descriptions with scientific names of several Australian animals in his "Zoology of New Holland" (1794). He was among the first scientists to examine a platypus and published the first scientific description of it in The Naturalist's Miscellany in 1799. In the field of herpetology, he described numerous new species of reptile and amphibian. (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Shaw_(biologist))

London: G. Kearsley, 1800-1811

Size: 8vo (22 x 13,8cm)