Only 3 complete copies have been sold at auction in the last 50 years. Exceedingly rare botanical work, only edition produced in maybe 50 copies, depicting the rarest and most beautiful flowers of the Brazilian tropical forests and drawn by the otherwise unknown Edith Holland Norton ( -1932) during a trip to Brazil in 1880-1882. Edith Norton's magnificent, large format flora of the rain forest around Rio de Janeiro. A feature of the book are the splendid orchid illustrations. The work is very scarce and rarely appears complete and coloured on the market. Only 3 complete copies have appeared at auction in the past 50 years. About the artist nothing is known, only that she died in 1932, told by her granddaughter Nancy Wykeham (entry of Kew Gardens which resolve the authors name). We don't know why Norton was in Brazil, if she was an amateur or painter, and we also don't know why the work was privately published.
This copy is a proof before letters, the plates printed on at least two different papers. Of the 50 plates, all except one have the titles in manuscript, an attractive calligraphic hand; a single example, Aristolochia Brasiliensis has the printed caption as it appears in the published edition.