As the rain has poured down for the last week or more, those of us with gardens have been relieved that we no longer have to water but now they look bedraggled and dire need of some TLC. Healy. Rare Books have recently produced Catalogue 22 and I spotted a work by William Robinson, The Parks, Promenades & Gardens of Paris…which contains forty-eight plates as well as many other illustrations. Robinson was born in Ireland in 1838 and studied horticulture at the National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin near Dublin. He went on to become a most influential and respected gardener and horticultural writer. He was a formidable character, hot tempered and outspoken but also energetic and diligent with a classic Victorian zeal for reform. In 1861, he moved to London and spent some time working in Regent’s Park. The work advertised in the catalogue is priced at €295.

Of course, those of us with gardens are lucky to be able to harvest a few – or many, in the case of our editor – vegetables at this time of year, if the sun has not burned them.  However, there was a time when Ireland was on the brink of starvation and Letters on the Conditions of the People of Ireland by Thomas Campbell Foster is for sale at €800. Foster was a London Barrister at the time (1846) and was commissioned by The Times (London) to undertake a tour of five months of Ireland and his reports in letter format were published from August 1845 to January 1846. An example of how Foster gave a detailed and exact description of the places he visited in this case Menlo (Mionloch in Irish) in County Galway. “The way through the village is the most crooked, as well as the most narrow and dirty lane that can be conceived. There is no row of houses, or anything approaching to a row, but each cottage is stuck independently by itself, and always at an acute, obtuse, or right angle to the next cottage”.

There are a number of books by P. S. O’Hegarty inscribed for either Elkin Matthews or P. H. Muir which are priced in the main at €525. Inscribed with two autographed letters (A/Ls) is A Bibliography of Books by Seamus O’Kelly which is inscribed for Seamus O’Sullivan by O’Hegarty. One of the two letters is addressed to Starkey, which the cataloguer believes to be Seamus O’Sullivan Starkey, is from O’Hegarty seeking clarification and copies of O’Kelly’s works dated 9 August 1934: the second is from Nora O’Kelly asking for the return of the play “Spring and The Rose”. This set of items is valued at €600.