Curtis’s Botanical Magazine

About

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine is the longest running botanical magazine, started way back in February of 1787 (though at that point it was under the name The Botanical Magazine).

A wood engraving of the Palm House at Kew: a long glasshouse with curved iron-and-glass wings either side of a taller central dome, reflected in the pond in front of it, with trees massed to the right and clouds above.
The Palm House at Kew, used on the title page since Volume 70 in 1844.

This was the second such effort of original creator William Curtis, whose first effort, Flora Londinensis, had won praise but not money (it had a subscription model of 318 subscribersRay Desmond, A Celebration of Flowers: Two Hundred Years of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, p. 13.). Flora was handicapped by a number of issues: it only showed plants growing within ten miles of London, it had unnumbered plates making it hard to reference, it was slow to come out, and it was expensive.

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine turned this all on its head. Rather than describe the more common plants, he went for exotic ones. He numbered each plate, and kept to a consistent schedule of three plates every month (jumping up to 6 after volume 43). Instead of an expensive subscription, each release cost one shilling. At the time there was a large influx of foreign specimens, brought back from Francis Masson's Cape expeditions, from Cook's Endeavour, and from the convict settlements of Australia, all of which buoyed interest and provided material. It quickly went on to sell over 3,000 copies/printing.

Unfortunately only 12 years after the first volume was released William Curtis died at age 53. In his will he requested that the magazine be continued under his friend, Dr John Sims.

After Curtis died in 1799 it passed to John Sims, then to William Jackson Hooker and his son Joseph, who between them edited it for most of the nineteenth century from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The plates went on being colored by hand until the middle of the twentieth.

The Artists

Sydenham Teast Edwards 1787–1815 · 1,666 plates
Drew nearly every plate for the magazine's first quarter-century, before leaving to start a rival, the Botanical Register.
John Curtis 1819–1832 · 450 plates
An entomologist, best known for his British Entomology and no relation to William. He drew for the magazine through the 1820s, between Edwards and Hooker.
William Jackson Hooker 1827–1865 · 565 plates
Edited the magazine for almost forty years, and in his early years as editor drew many of its plates himself.
Walter Hood Fitch 1834–1877 · 2,721 plates
The most prolific artist in its history. When the magazine moved from copper engraving to lithography he drew straight onto the stone.
Matilda Smith 1878–1923 · 2,291 plates
Joseph Hooker's cousin, trained by him after Fitch left. She became Kew's first official botanical artist.

In all, 71 artists are credited in the plates here. Besides those above:

5 plates, Elizabeth Harrison, Horsfall, Telfair, Augusta Innes Withers; 4 plates, W. Curtis, Eleanor Anne Ormerod, William Wilson Saunders, Patrick Syme; 3 plates, Adams, Franz Bauer, Frederick William Burbidge, E.D. Smith, Sowerby, J.D. Sowerby; 2 plates, Nicholas Edward Brown, Maria Curtis, Dally, E. Duncombe, R.T. Lowe, Thomas Nicholson, C.E.C. Norton, J. Scott, C.W. Short, Worthington George Smith, J.D.C. Sowerby; and 1 plate, John Allen, E.N. Bancroft, M.E. Barber, H. Barrand, V. Bartholomew, Bewick, W.B. Booth, F. Cobe, A. Cunningham, G. Curtis, H. Curtis, S.M. Curtis, E. Durham, Ellis, T. Glover, T. Holland, F. Hyde, James Laird Macfarlane, John Traherne Moggridge, Morse, Miss. Murray, M. Norbury, Miss. C.M. Pope, Sir R.K. Porter, E.J. Smith, Mrs. Stannard, S. Vandergucht, F.H. Woolward, Miss Wray.

This is in addition to countless engravers and colorists who worked tirelessly to make the Magazine a reality.

Credits

The scans come from the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the libraries that contribute to it, and many of the plates are also on BHL's Flickr. Each plate links back to its page in the original volume.

Set in Cormorant Garamond by Christian Thalmann and Old Standard TT by Alexey Kryukov.

Downloads