London, Benjamin White, 1776. 8vo (21.4 x 13.0 cm). viii, iii-vi, 319, [i] pp.; seven large, folded, finely hand-coloured engraved plates, two large, folded charts. Contemporary full speckled calf. Boards with gilt vignette and monogram; spine with five raised, gilt-ornamented bands; compartments with gilt stars, vignettes; greek key bands at head and foot, and red morocco label with gilt title. Marbled endpapers. Speckled edges.

A rare, originally hand-coloured copy of the first work on shells by the British malacologist Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717-1791) in a fine, contemporary binding. The colouring is realistic, accurate. Two years later his Historia Naturalis Testacearum Britanniae was published, but this earlier work deals with worldwide shells. Provenance: Bartlett Gurney (1756-1803), of Norwich; with his bookplate on the front pastedown, and his monogram and vignette of a lion on both boards. Also with the armorial bookplate of John Longe, of Spixworth Hall (probably the priest and magistrate who lived from 1765 to 1834), and inscribed by the leading Conidae specialist of the second half of the 20th, and early years of the 21st century, Alan Jacob Kohn (1931-2022). "Bartlett Gurney, of Coltishall in Norfolk, was the eldest son of Henry Gurney of St Augustine's Parish Norwich. and Elizabeth, daughter of Benjamin Bartlett of Bartlett House, Bolton near Bradford in Yorkshire. A member of the great Quaker family and a partner in Gurney's Bank, Norwich, he married firstly, in 1780, Hannah, daughter of Abel Chapman, of Whitney. She died in 1798 without children, and he married secondly, in 1800, Mary, daughter of William Cockell, of Attleborough" (University of Toronto Libraries). Spixworth Hall, near Norwich, was built in 1607 and demolished in 1952. "The house's library consisted of one of the most extensive collections of first-edition books of any stately home in the UK, with works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Miquel de Cervantes" (Wikipedia). Some light offsetting from the plates to the opposite text leaves, as often; hinges slightly tender, but otherwise a very good copy in a fine binding and with an interesting provenance. Nissen ZBI, 2784.