1597 1st John Gerarde Herball
Plants English Herbal Illustrated Stirpium Botany
Over 2100 INCREDIBLE Woodcuts / comp@$40,000+
John Gerard, also spelt John Gerarde, (c.
1545–1612) was a botanist and herbalist. He maintained a large herbal garden in
London. His chief notability is as the author of a big – 1484 pages – and
heavily illustrated Herball, or Generall
Historie of Plantes. First published in 1597, it was the most widely
circulated botany book in English in the 17th century.
Herball, or Generall
Historie of Plantes was often thought
to be an English translation of Dodoen’s Stirpium…;
however, it was later discovered that Gerarde was brought in to finish the work
of a Robert Priest. (see below for more thorough explanation of history)
We find (uncolored) examples
of this work for sale elsewhere for $23,000! We find a Sothebys auction record
– hand colored, for $40,000+
Main author: John Gerarde
Title: The Herball or
Generall Historie of Plantes.
Published: London :
John Norton, 1597.
Language: Latin
Notes & contents:
·
1st
edition of most famous English herbal
·
Contains
portrait of Gerarde
·
2139 illustrated
woodcut engravings
·
Lacks only
the following pages:
o Engraved title page (replaced in
facsimile)
o Three prelims following title
o pp. 15/16; pp. 983/984 + 19 various
leaves from indices at end
·
Provenance: Alexander O’Driscoll Taylor
(1832-1910, of Belfast, Ireland, booklabel, but died Newport , Rhode Island,
USA); Robert Magill Young (1851-1925, of Belfast, inscription).
·
The history of the
production of Gerarde's Herball has not been entirely worked out. It seems that
the publisher had commissioned Dr. Robert Priest to translate Dodoens' Stirpium
historiae pemptades sex (1583) into English, but that he had died before completing
the task. John Gerarde was then brought in, and finished the translation, while
changing the system of classification from that of Dodoens (a pharmacological
one) to that of Mathias de Lobel (an attempt at a natural system), and adding
notes and observations of his own. The vast majority of the woodcuts were hired
from the Frankfurt publisher of Tabernaemontanus. At one point Norton brought
in Lobel to correct some of Gerarde's more egregious errors (Lobel claimed to
have discovered over 1000). Gerarde's own contribution may be no more than his
appealing Elizabethan prose style and his description of the 'Virginian
potato'. One of the few woodcuts that is original to this work is in fact the
first illustration of the potato. The Tabernaemontanus cuts were based on the
images of Fuchs, Brunfels, Mattioli, and the Flemish botanists published by
Plantin (Dodoens, L'Écluse, and others). Interestingly, the portrait of
Gerarde, who is depicted aged 53 holding a potato flower, is dated 1598. It is
by William Rogers, and exists both in an unsigned state, and signed 'WR' (as
here).
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Wear: wear as seen in photos
Binding: tight and secure leather binding
Pages: lacking only a few pages as
described above, but otherwise complete with all 1392 pages; plus indexes,
prefaces, and such
Publisher: Morgiis
: excudebat J. Le Preux, 1581.
Size: ~13in X 9in (33cm x 22.5cm)
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$15000
John Gerard, also spelt John Gerarde, (c. 1545–1612) was a botanist
and herbalist.[1] He maintained a large herbal garden in London.[2] His chief
notability is as the author of a big – 1484 pages – and heavily illustrated
Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes. First published in 1597, it was the
most widely circulated botany book in English in the 17th century.
Except for the additions of a number of plants from his own garden
and from North America, Gerard's Herbal is largely an English translation of
Rembert Dodoens's Herbal of 1554, itself also highly popular (in Dutch, Latin,
French and other English translations).
Gerard's Herball is profusely illustrated with high-quality
drawings of plants, with the printer's woodcuts for the drawings largely coming
from Dodoens's book and from other Continental European sources,[3] but also containing
an original title page with copperplate engraving by William Rogers.
Two decades after Gerard's death, his Herbal was corrected and
expanded to about 1700 pages. The botanical genus Gerardia is named in Gerard's
honour.
Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Publications
2.1 Garden writing
2.2 Controversy
3 Addenda
4 Footnotes
5 External links
Life[edit]
Gerard was born at Nantwich, where he received his early and only
schooling. Around the age of 17 he was apprenticed as a barber-surgeon.
Although he claimed to have learned much about plants from travelling to other
parts of the world, his actual travels appear to have been limited. For
example, at some time in his later youth, he is reputed to have made one trip
abroad, possibly as a ship’s surgeon on a merchant ship sailing around the
North Sea.[4] In 1577, he began to supervise the London gardens of William
Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley. By 1595, Gerard had become a member of the Court of
Assistants in the Barber-Surgeon's Company. By 1595, he was spending much time
commuting from the court to his gardens in the suburb of Holborn, and attending
to his duties for Burghley. In 1597, he was appointed junior warden of the
Barber-Surgeons, and in 1608, master of the same. Gerard was a doer, not a
thinker, and an outsider in relation to the community of Lime Street
naturalists in London at the time.[5] His somewhat flawed (from the perspective
of some of his contemporaries) Herball is dedicated to Burghley.
Publications[edit]
Generall Historie of Plantes, p. 1,329; describing Ficus indica
In 1596, Gerard published a list of rare plants he cultivated in
his own garden at Holborn, where he introduced exotic plants from the New
World, including a plant he misidentified as the Yucca. The Yucca failed to
bloom during his lifetime, but a pip taken from his plant later bloomed for a
contemporary. To this day Yucca bears the name Gerard gave it. A copy of the
list of plants in his garden, published in 1596, exists in the British Museum.
In 1597, Gerard published his famous Great Herball, or Generall Historie of
Plantes. The 1597 edition reused hundreds of woodblocks from Jacobus Theodorus
Tabernaemontanus Eicones Plantarum (Frankfurt, 1590), which themselves had been
reused from earlier 16th-century botanical books by Pietro Andrea Mattioli,
Rembert Dodoens, Carolus Clusius, and Matthias de l'Obel.[6] The plant drawings
in the 1633 and 1636 editions used hundreds of woodblocks originally made for
an edition of Rembert Dodoens's herbal; the woodblocks were shipped from
Antwerp to London for the purpose.[7]
Because it was a practical and useful book, packed with helpful
drawings of plants, and because Gerard had a fluid and lively writing manner,
his Herball was popular with ordinary literate people in 17th century England.
There is evidence of the book still being in practical use even in the early
19th century.[8]
The 1633 edition of Gerard's Herball was edited by Thomas Johnson,
an apothecary and botanist who lived in London, under commission from the heirs
to the estate of John Gerard. His edition contained many corrections and new
information based on empirical observation. Through anecdotal comments, Johnson
carefully distanced himself from the original work. For example, he wrote of
the entry on the saffron crocus, "Our author in this chapter was of many
minds." Gerard can be considered one of the founders of botany in English
language, but he was not well educated, and he was not an outstanding botanist
in terms of technical knowledge in his own time according to his critics.[9]
Garden writing[edit]
The art of describing the natural world through direct observation
divides Renaissance natural historians from their medieval predecessors, whose
practitioners were largely uncritical adherents of the ancient texts. The
earliest printed works in Renaissance natural history fell into two categories:
1. newly recovered, translated and corrected editions of ancient texts, and 2.
herbals based on the empirical knowledge of the early botanists. Although
Francis Bacon advocated inductive thinking based on observation or description
(empiricism) as the way to understand and report on the natural world, the
early Renaissance printed herbals were slightly modified adaptations of the
works of their medieval predecessors. Generally, these somewhat unscientific
early scientists contented themselves with listing plants and occasionally
other things like animals and minerals, and noting their medical uses.[10]
John Gerard worked within the early wave of Renaissance natural
historians, who sought to systematize natural history while retaining the works
of the ancients.[11] The basis for Gerard's Herball, like those of Dodoens and
other herbalists, was the De Materia Medica of Dioscorides, an early Greek
writer whose work was considered a definitive text, as well as the works by
Gerard's contemporaries, the German botanists Leonard Fuchs, after whom Fuchsia
is named, and the Flemish botanist Matthias de l'Obel or Lobelius, after whom
Lobelia is named. Both Fuchs and L'Obel were early botanists who worked
empirically with plants. They were well educated, as were other members of the
"Lime Street community" in the City of London. Gerard and L'Obel were
friends who made occasional field trips together, although Gerard, who was less
well-educated and lived in the suburb of Holborn, was considered an outsider by
the Lime Street community.
Controversy[edit]
"The Nutmeg with his Mace about him", page from The
Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes, 1633
The origins of Gerard's Herball, famous for its detailed (if
sometimes inaccurate) descriptions of plants, as well as the folklore contained
in the articles regarding natural phenomena and its splendid prose and prints,
are somewhat controversial. The Queen's printer John Norton had commissioned a
Dr Priest to prepare an English-language translation of Rembert Dodoens'
immensely popular herbal, but Priest died before completing the work. Norton,
the eventual publisher of the Herball, then asked John Gerard to take over the
work. Gerard finished the translation, rearranging the work, and adding
as-yet-unpublished material from his friend, the herbalist L'Obel. However, in
the herbal, Gerard states that Priest's translation had disappeared and that he
had written a new book.
Modern-day authorities disagree as to how much of Gerard's Herball
was original. James Garret, a Huguenot apothecary living and working in London,
and a neighbour of L'Obel, made a chance visit to the Norton publishing shop,
where he discovered the proofs of the Herball, and alerted the Nortons as both
to errors he discovered in the proofs and to the incorporation of some of
L'Obel's material in Gerard's new book. Although they were not concerned about
plagiarism, the Nortons, fearing errors in a book that was supposed to be an
expert reference guide, hired L'Obel, an internationally recognized expert on
plants (who had as Gerard’s friend, unwittingly contributed to his book) to
proof the translations, fix the mismatched illustrations, and right its textual
wrongs. When Gerard discovered L'Obel's thankless efforts, he had him
dismissed. Later, Gerard was accused by L'Obel of plagiarizing a translation of
Dodoens' work for his Herball.[12]
Addenda[edit]
Despite some shortcomings in Gerard’s effort, Linnaeus honored him
in the name of the plant genus Gerardia. Gerard’s Herball references many of
the poisonous plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays. Additional value has
been placed on the Herball by students of literature. For example, the herb
which produces the deathlike sleep of Juliet or Cymbeline may refer to
Nightshade, Mandragora or Doronicum, all of them listed and described in the
Herball.[13]
The standard author abbreviation J.Gerard is used to indicate this
individual as the author when citing a botanical name.