[Signed] The Hot-House Gardener or the General Culture of the Pine-Apple, and methods of forcing Early Grapes, Peaches, Nectarines, and other choice

First edition. London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1789. Octavo (9 13/16"" x 6"", 250mm x 153mm): A-Q8 [$4 signed; -A1]. 128 leaves, pp. i-iii (title, blank, preface) iv-xvi, 1 2-238, [2] (2pp. advertisements). [=xvi, 238, ii] With five engraved plates (sanguine). Bound in publisher's blue boards, rebacked to style, preserving the original spine label. Bottom and fore-edges untrimmed. Rebacked to style, with the original spine label laid down. Rubbing and soiling to the boards, and some loss to the front fore-corners (especially the lower). L2.3 unopened. A lovely copy, without foxing or toning. On Q8 (pp. 237/8), the blind armorial library stamp of Ri[chard] Grosvenor Bartelot FSA. Although the first pineapple was cultivated in the UK in the late seventeenth or likelier the early eighteenth century, a mania for them continued right through the Georgian period. Pineries, hothouses specifically for pineapples, became a grand statement of wealth and cultivation. The pineapple would come to be the table centerpiece par excellence, and pineapple finials on buildings became common in Britain; the pinnacles of the belltowers of St. Paul's Cathedral are golden pineapples. (Mrs Malaprop makes a very good pineapple-pinnacle swap.) John Abercrombie (1726-1806) established himself as the great Georgian gardening expert; with Thomas Mawe he wrote Every Man His Own Gardener (1767), an exceptionally popular manual. He was employed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. His fame brought him to the attention of Catherine the Great but he sent a book rather than going himself to oversee her hothouses. The Hot-House Gardener was an invaluable tool for the widespread establishment in England of artificial climates, whether full glass houses or merely walled gardens with elaborate networks of pipes to ripen fruit early and more reliably. The Reverend Richard Grosvenor Bartelot (1868-1947) was long vicar of Fordington St. George, Dorset (after serving at Shrewton and Corfe Castle). There he preached 4,000 sermons. Bartelot served as editor of the Somerset & Dorset Notes & Queries, and was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He descended from a long line of Bartelots (he re-antiquated his surname from Bartlett), and corresponded with Thomas Hardy (who was president of the Society of Dorset Men in London) on matters of local interest. Cleveland Herbal 589, Henry 402, Hunt 700.