James Sowerby

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James Sowerby (March 21, 1757 - October 25, 1822) was a British naturalist and illustrator. He was born in London, where he studied art at the Royal Academy and worked with William Curtis, whose Flora londinensis he illustrated.

In 1790, he began the first of several enormously huge projects: a 36-volume work on the botany of England that was published over the next 24 years, contained 2592 hand-colored engravings and was known simply as Sowerby's Botany. The text, however, had been written by James Edward Smith.

His next project was of similar scale: the Mineral Conchology of Great Britain, a comprehensive catalog of many invertebrate fossils found in England, was published over a 34-year time-span, the latter parts by his sons James De Carle Sowerby and George Brettingham Sowerby I.

He also developed a theory of color and published two landmark illustrated works on mineralogy: the British Mineralogy (1804 - 1817) and as a supplement to it the Exotic Mineralogy (1811 - 1820).