Author: John Gerarde
Title: The Herbal or Generall Historie of Plantes
Date: 1636
Price: GBP £ 18,000
Book Code: 432

 

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<>JOHN GERARDE. The Herbal or Generall Historie of Plantes.gathered by John Gerarde of London Master in Chirurgerie.Very much enlarged and amanded bt Thomas Johnson,Citizen and Apothecarye of London. London: Adam Islip Joice Norton and Richard Whitakers,1636. Contemporary calf, spine with arabesque gilt designs in compartments, red morocco title-piece. A very nice copy of a rare coloured example. Third Edition,(Second Johnson Edition),with engraved title by Payne,numerous ornaments and initials,and over 2700 woodcuts, all Beautifully Coloured by a Contemporary Hand, dedication leaves (in Latin, and in English),introduction ‘To the Reader' (14 pages), ‘Catalogue of Additions' (7 pages), 1630 numbered pages, followed by full page illustration leaf (blank to verso), Latin index (10 leaves unnumbered), English index (4 leaves unnumbered), Appendix to General Table (1 leaf), Catalogue.sent by Robert Dauys (one leaf), Table wherein is contained the Nature and Vertues (7 leaves), ‘advertisement to reader' to verso final leaf. without original first and last blanks as usual,title page mounted.

 A Beautifully Coloured Copy

The most renowned herbal by the barber surgeon, who supervised the gardens of Lord Burleigh and Theobolds and kept his own famous garden in Holborn for twenty years, for which he issued a list of plants cultivated,this was the first complete catalogue ever published of the contents of a single garden. The Osler catalogue states that Gerard used as the basis of his herbal, a translation of Dodoens begun by Robert Priest, but without any acknowledgment, while according to William T.Stearn (DSB), "to what extent Gerard was indebted to Priest's work is quite uncertain.The Herball as published,was on the whole so massive a task that it seems charitable to credit [Gerard] with the whole. It remains a valuable source of information about the plants available in western European gardens at the end of the sixteenth century and about the Latin and vernacular names then applied to them. The 1597 edition was illustrated mainly with woodblocks obtained by the publisher Norton from Nikolaus Bassée of Frankfurt, who had used them in the German herbal of Tabernaemontanus (Theodorus of Bergzabern), 1588-91. Several other cuts were added by Gerard, notably one which is considered to be the earliest depiction of the potato, which Gerard believed was native to Virginia. In his revised edition, Johnson enlarged the text to include a total of 2850 plants, added a comprehensive historical introduction, "corrected many of Gerard's more gullible errors, and improved the accuracy of the illustrations by using Plantin's woodcuts." (Hunt).