Not published, [1953, 1968]. Small 8vo (15.9 x 10.0 cm). 128 pp. Handwritten text. Original blind quarter linen over silk-covered boards. Edges rounded.

This is a hand-written, chronological catalogue of books in the private botanical library of the English botanist, and compiler, Douglas "Duggie" Henry Kent (1920-1998), listing 667 numbered books and papers, and several that are "required". Included are the "state" (new or second hand), and the paid price for most. Those without a price were probably obtained as gifts, or in exchange. Undated, but obviously from early in his career, and up to 1954, as one of the last entries is the periodical, Taxon Vol. 3(2), published in that year. It is signed, by Kent, on the front paste-down. "Meanwhile, quite apart from a steady flow of papers in journals, he was busily accumulating material for several more major works. As he would have been the first to recognise, he was an almost compulsive compiler: he liked nothing so much as hunting down and extracting innumerable items of information and creating out of the resulting mass a useful volume of reference... During the 1950s, while engaged on British Herbaria, Duggie simultaneously gave extensive assistance to the American botanist S. F. Blake in connection with the latter's second volume, covering Western Europe, of Geographical Guide to Floras of the World, published in 1961. Duggie's own Index to Botanical Monographs (1967) was similar in character, if much more narrowly focused: "a guide to monographs and taxonomic papers relating to phanerogams and vascular cryptogams found growing wild in the British Isles". Collected together in this are nearly 1.900 references from the year 1800 onwards" (Allen and Stace). ADDED: A long letter (dated 27 January 1968) by Kent on his stationery as Honorary Assistant Secretary of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, to the British botanist David Charles McClintock (1913-2001), "Dear David", addressing the latter's critique on Kent's Index to Botanical Monographs (1967). We have ADDED McClintock's copy, in original dust jacket, and with his armorial bookplate on the front pastedown. Binding of the notebook a bit weak, otherwise good. A unique item. Allen, D. E. and C. A. Stace (2000). Obituary Douglas Henry Kent ( 1920-1998). Watsonia 23, pp. 3-8.