A delightful and handsome set of illustrated educational cards published in London in 1840 and addressing topics in astronomy, meteorology and optics, touching on themes as close to home as rainbows and as far afield as nebulae.
The set consists of 104 educational cards, accompanied by an instructional booklet and housed in a book-form half-leather case. The cards are absolutely lovely: They are beautifully rendered in aquatint, many delicately colored, and the artist has gone above and beyond by setting many of the illustrative diagrams in romantic landscapes. Some of the cards are particularly charming or striking, including for example “The Moon’s Surface” (75-76), “Atmospheric Refraction” (93), and “The Rainbow” (104).
“This little astronomical work contains 104 beautifully hand-colored lithographs[sic] of the moon, planets, and constellations, along with eclipses and atmospheric phenomena. The constellations dotted with golden stars are great examples of the elegance and simplicity of the book’s execution. Author Charles Blunt’s introduction to the book explains that it was created so that a family need not “quit their own parlour, or drawing-room fireside, to enjoy the sublime ‘beauty of the heavens.’” With every plate comes a ‘lecture’ or description designed to be read aloud, facilitating at-home learning. The Beauty of the Heavens is a wonderful example of a mid-19th-century home instructional tool designed to be both scientifically accurate and inspiring.” (Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, Smithsonian Institution)
“Blunt marketed his book of popular astronomy to families and envisioned them reading it aloud together in their parlors. His astronomical drawings, such as this diagram of the moon’s phases, are as elegant as they are legible. The brief descriptive “lectures” that accompany each illustration are likewise simplified and free from scientific jargon.” (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
This collection was first issued in 1840 and must have met with some success, as OCLC records an edition as late as 1858. It appears to be a greatly-expanded edition of Blanche Elizabeth Blunt’s Uranographia: The Beauty of the Heavens (London: Simpkin & Marshall, 1836), a small pamphlet illustrated with three plates stylistically similar to those offered here. Ms. (or Mrs.) Blunt was presumably a close relation of Charles F. Blunt.
The collection appears not infrequently at auction, but more often than not with the cards incomplete, in ravaged condition, or missing the book-form box present here.
References
OCLC 17652668 et al (this edition of 1840).