Red cloth binding with gilt title and green and black decoration on the spine and front board.

F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feel and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

A good original copy of a famed and now often reproduced book.

John George Wood, or Rev J. G. Wood, (21 July 1827 – 3 March 1889), was an English writer who popularised natural history with his writings.

Wood was a prolific and successful natural history writer, though rather as a populariser than as a scientist. For example, his book Common objects of the country sold 100,000 copies in a week. Among his works are Common Objects of the Microscope; Illustrated Natural History (1853); Animal Traits and Characteristics (1860); Common Objects of the Sea Shore (1857); The Uncivilized Races, or Natural History of Man (1868) (to which Mark Twain refers in his humorous work Roughing It); Out of Doors  (1874) (a book that was quoted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane”); Field Naturalist’s Handbook (with T. Wood) (1879–80); books on gymnastics and sport; and an edition of Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne. He also edited The Boys Own Magazine.

Wood died at Coventry on 3 March 1889.