British Butterflies and Moths (1907)
12 beautiful chromolithograph plates (complete).
The Global Footprint of the British Book Trade
The bottom of the page highlights the publisher's hubs: London, New York, Bombay, and Calcutta. By 1911, Longmans, Green, and Co. had evolved from a traditional London house into a powerhouse of colonial and global distribution.
Books like W. Furneaux's Butterflies and Moths weren't just meant for schoolboys in the English countryside; they were exported in vast numbers to the far reaches of the British Empire. They served both as standard educational tools for expatriates and as part of a broader cultural push to catalog and understand natural history through a distinctly British lens.
A Lost Publishing District: 39 Paternoster Row
The address listed—39 Paternoster Row, London—is a ghost geography. For centuries, Paternoster Row was the undisputed heart of the London publishing and bookselling world. Longmans had occupied this specific site since 1724, when the firm's founder purchased a shop there named The Ship.
Tragically, this entire historic publishing hub was completely obliterated on the night of December 29, 1940, during the Second World War. A massive Luftwaffe incendiary raid caused what became known as the Second Great Fire of London. The Longmans building at No. 39 was burned to the ground, destroying millions of books, centuries of irreplaceable publisher archives, and ending Paternoster Row's long history as a literary sanctuary.
The Era of the "Edwardian Reissue"
The page contains a curious chronological layering: it notes a "New Impression (1907)" but is dated 1911 at the bottom.
Originally published in 1894 during the late-Victorian craze for amateur naturalism, the book remained so popular that it was constantly being re-imprinted. By the Edwardian era, publishers like Longmans heavily relied on these steady, reliable "backlist" titles to fund their riskier, modern literary ventures. This particular copy is a "reissue" utilizing the plates and layout updated in 1907, bound and sold to meet the ongoing demand for nature study guides just before the outbreak of the First World War.
Spine slightly faded; some offsetting to tissue guards and endpapers. Reissue.
145mm x 200mm
R750
