
Luke Batterham
Senior Valuer
This auction has ended. View lot details
Sold for £375 inc. premium
Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialist
Senior Valuer
Scarce, anonymously published and innuendo-filled poetical satire on botanists, especially Joseph Banks. The lengthy dedication mentions his work on the "sultry soil of of Otaheité", and his "most animating sap". In the poem "the mimosa, which is sensitive to touch, represents both the male and female sexual organs. Banks, the plant hunter, is constantly in search of new varieties of his 'sensitive plant' (that is, the vagina)..." (Sam George Botany, Sexuality and Women's Writing 1760-1830, 2007, p.109). A further joke is the spurious publisher "Sandwich, near the Admiralty", a reference to Bank's sponsor Lord Sandwich. "Both were enthusiastic London clubmen as well as being fellow devotees of a free-living demi-monde" (ODNB).