Author: LISLE (Edward):
Title: Observations in Husbandry.
Description: London: Printed by J. Hughs...For C. Hitch and L. Hawes..., 1757. FIRST EDITION. 4to, 282 x 222 mms., pp. xvi, 450 [451 - 542 Contents, 543 Errata, 544 blank], engraved portrait of author as frontispiece (off-setting onto title-page), contemporary calf, rebacked in darker calf, gilt spine, black leather label; a very good copy with an armorial bookplate on the front paste-down end-paper. Edward Lisle (?1666 - 1722) collected information about farming, but it fell to his son, Thomas Lisle, to see that the work was published. A second edition in two volumes was published in the same year, and it was this copy that George Washington had in his library. Kevin Hayes, in his George Washington: A Life in Books (2017), observes that, "Edward Lisle's Observations in Husbandry, while making no pretense of being a complete guide to its subject, gave readers a huge amount of agricultural information. Despite its haphazard quality, the book contains a vast amount of practical detail and a number of agricultural observations. Lisle deserves credit for collecting traditional wisdom that had circulated orally among British farmers for generations, which new farmers could now put to good use." The Monthly Review noticed the second edition in 1759: "The first edition of this work (which was a quarto volume) having been so well received by the public..., we should now hope to be excused from entering deep into the merits of a performance, that seemes, nevertheless, to deserve the attention of all friends of agriculture."

Keywords: farming agriculture prose


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