Alfred Barton Rendle was a renowned English botanist, keeper of Botany at the Natural History Museum and botany editor for the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1911. The Classification of Flowering Plants is perhaps his best-known work. This volume was first published in 1904, updated in 1929, and it remained in print until the late 1970s. The second volume of The Classification of Flowering Plants was published in 1925. These works are now being reissued by Cambridge. In this first volume of his prolific study, Rendle acquaints the reader with the two great groups - Gymnosperms and Angiosperms. Detailed chapters discuss the evolution of plant classification and address in turn Spermatophytes, Gymnosperms, Angiosperms and Monoctyledons. The book itself is highly illustrated and the writing truly informative. Its scope and detail will continue to impress the reader today.