Album of Darjeeling Ferns

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An exceptional and highly desired firsthand compilation of Darjeeling ferns by Mrs Phoebe Jaffrey comprising of 39 full page fern specimens.

small folio (36.5 cm x 28.5 cm), circa 1880s, straight-grain half-morocco over embossed cloth boards, a little rubbed and soiled. This remarkable manuscript album contains some of the contemporary ferns in the mountainous Darjeeling district of the northern Bengal province in British India. Each leaf contains a printed label of the fern species pasted on each page, detailing Genus, Species and Patria. The ferns are very well preserved generally with minor occasional losses, there exists a little spotting to a few leaves, else in great overall condition.

Mrs Phoebe Jaffrey was the wife of Andrew Thomas Jaffrey, the founding curator in 1878 of the Lloyd Botanic Gardens in Darjeeling, and author of Hints to the Amateur Gardeners of Southern India (1855-1860). The compiler Mrs Jaffrey is widely known to have distributed such manuscript-style fern albums to her friends and other Company subjects. Throughout the 1850s and later, Darjeeling was being developed as one of the finest tea cultivating regions of the world, a status that is still held strong in the global market. The hilly station of Darjeeling, located a few hundred miles north of the British capital Calcutta, was a popular destination for Company officers and their families engaged in tea-based trades and was a major hub of tourism in general.

Title: An Album of Darjeeling Ferns

Publisher: Compiled by Mrs P Jaffrey

Publication Date: circa 1880s

Binding: Original hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Edition: First