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Article: James Sowerby, his publications and collections. (mineral illustrator)(Mineral Books)
- Article from:
- The Mineralogical Record
- Article date:
- July 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 The Mineralogical, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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INTRODUCTION
For the past 40 years I have been fascinated by the superb and beautiful mineral colorplate works of James Sowerby and his descendants. As I became a serious book-collector, and then an amateur writer on the history of minerals and books, I promised myself that one day I would write about this fascinating family and their mineralogical publications.
The two Sowerby mineralogies discussed here are very high on most mineral-book collectors' lists of desiderata, but with perhaps fewer than one hundred (I know of only 50 so far) surviving complete copies of British Mineralogy and far fewer (I know of only 24) of Exotic Mineralogy, only the most ...