The Shropshire Word-Book: A Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Etc., Used in the County

First edition, first impression. civ, 524pp, two colour map for frontispiece. Half-bound in deep green calf’s leather over brighter green cloth-covered boards, with gilt decorations, four raised bands on spine. Marbled endpaper. Top edge gilt, other edges deckled. Thick 8vo. . Boards are worn, rubbed on edges and more markedly so on corners and spine joints. Front joint partially cracked so front board wobbles. A few mild marks. Free endpapers mildly but oddly chipped at edges. Some spotting on first and last few leaves, else internally neat, clean and tight. Previous owner’s name, dated 1886, on bastard title page. The front paste down endpaper has the bookplate of John Dovaston, of the Nursery, West Felton in Shropshire, dated 1910. The Nursery was the ancestral home of the Shropshire Dovaston family from its foundation in the mid18th century until the family relocated to Australia in the 1960s. As such is was the home of John Freeman Milward Dovaston, the polymath, poet and horticulturist who developed a large arboretum, introducing the cultivar of yew in 1777 that now bears his name. The volume is a collection of Shropshire’s local and provincial words, their meanings and derivations, the influences of regional dialects and local folklore and superstition in the rural and border county of Shropshire.