London: William Collins, 1945-2019. Octavo, a complete run of 22 volumes of Monograph. A very good to fine set, all in dustwrappers.

The 'New Naturalist' series has been continuously published since the first volume in 1945. Subjects are primarily British and most of the contributing authors are the leaders in their specialised fields. Apart from high quality texts, New Naturalists are distinguished by the original dustwrapper designs of Clifford and Rosemary Ellis, with the style being continued by other artists such as Robert Gilmour. Print runs are usually small and many volumes are highly collectable. New Naturalists can be best described as the 'modern firsts' of natural history book collecting.

There have been a number of books published on the New Naturalist including one in the series.

Marren, Peter. The new naturalists: half a century of British natural history. London: Harper Collins, 1995. Octavo, 304 pp. New Naturalist 82.

Marren, Peter, and Robert Gillmor. Art of the New Naturalists: forms from nature. London: Harper Collins Publishers 2009. Quarto 310 pp.

Bernhard, Tim and Tim Loe. Collecting the New Naturalists. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2015. Quarto, 352 pp.

A spreadsheet is available describing individual volumes.

PROVENANCE: Dr Mervyn Cobcroft (born 1942 Melbourne), retired anaesthetist. Merv assembled a fine collection of Australian natural history, especially colour plate bird books and paintings. He "painstakingly assembled the complete series over many years, very much attracted by their celebrated, illustrated dust jackets" (MC pers com).