Gerard, John

The Herball or General Historie of Plantes

      Adam Islip, Joyce Norton and Richard Whitakers, London:: Adam Islip, Joyce Norton and Richard Whitakers,, 1636.. Handsome modern antique-style paneled calf, title on red morocco label; opening (!2-8) and final signatures (6y1-7b5), & 4L 3 &4 from another, slightly smaller copy; t.p. laid-down corner repair to last leaf with some text loss, occ. light dampstains, a few inner margins restored, lacks initial and final blanks (as usual).. Folio.. Engraved t.p. by John Payne (d.1647?), c2766 woodcuts in text, most HAND-COLORED. Third Edition (first: 1597), in effect a reissue or reprint of the preferred second edition of 1633, edited by London apothecary and botanist, Thomas Johnson.#11; "Gerard is perhaps the best remembered of all the English herbalists." (Garrison & Morton). A barber surgeon, he 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, the first complete catalogue ever published of the contents of a single garden. According to Arber and the Osler catalogue, 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 Bass!e 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). Gerard's herbal is listed in European Americana because it includes numerous descriptions and illustrations of American plants, including the previously mentioned potato. #11; STC 11752. Alden II 636/25. Arber 129ff. ESTC s122175. Henrey I 156. Hunt 230. Nissen, BBI, 698n. Pritzel 3282n. Wellcome 2754. Other eds: Osler 2722 (1st Edn.). Cole 358 (1633 Edn.).Garrison & Morton 1820 (1st Edn.).