1854 Scarce Book - Floral Offering, Legends of Flowers, Hand-Colored Plates

Author: Susan Pindar.
Title: The Floral Offering; or, Legends of the Flowers.
Publisher: New York: D. Appleton and Company, 346 & 348 Broadway, 1854.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 6.5 x 4.5 inches.
Pages: 178 pages + publisher’s catalogue.
Binding: Good to very good original brown cloth binding, richly decorated in blind with floral ornaments to the covers and gilt floral decoration to the spine. Light wear, rubbing, and scuffing to the boards and extremities, with some fading and wear to the spine, including the upper spine end, as shown. Binding remains attractive and sound. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Good to very good content. Light foxing, age-toning, and occasional staining throughout, as shown, otherwise a complete and well-preserved copy of this uncommon title.
Illustrations: Complete with 4 beautiful full-page hand-coloured illustrations, with original hand-colouring as published, including the frontispiece “Flora’s Festival,” together with “Fairy Island,” “Moss Mantle,” and “The Fay’s Mission.” The plates remain bright, charming, and very attractive.

Estimate:(Scarce with no or few other copies available for sale worldwide).

The book: A scarce and delightful mid-19th-century flower fairy book, The Floral Offering; or, Legends of the Flowers combines moral tales, botanical fancy, and fairy literature in a charming Victorian format. The work presents a series of flower legends and imaginative episodes, where flowers, fairies, children, and moral lessons are woven together in a style typical of the period’s gift books and juvenile literature. This 1854 Appleton edition is especially appealing for its delicate original hand-coloured plates, which add a vivid visual charm to the floral and fairy-world atmosphere of the text.

The author: Susan Pindar was a 19th-century writer of children’s and fairy literature, also noted on the title page as the author of Fireside Fairies and Midsummer Fays. Her work belongs to the Victorian tradition of combining fantasy, nature, and moral instruction, often using fairies and flowers as imaginative figures through which children could encounter lessons of kindness, beauty, and virtue.