Exhibitions
The Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes -
John Gerard
London: J. Norton, 1597
[D.-L.L.] To [Gerard]
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John Gerard’s Herball is one of the best-known botanical books
published in England and one of the longest-lived, contributing greatly
towards knowledge of plants in England and still in use in the second half
of the eighteenth century. While the text depends heavily on earlier
printed sources, most notably Rembert Dodoens’ Stirpium Historiae
Pemptades Sex (1583), Gerard added (sometimes erroneous) English
localities for plants, notes gained from personal experience and
observations, and information obtained from friends and correspondents.
The several hundred English native flowering plants described and
illustrated include approximately 182 not recorded in earlier works.
The illustrations are woodcuts, mostly printed from woodblocks which
Norton, the publisher, obtained from Frankfurt am Main and which had
been used in 1590 for Tabernaemontanus’ Eicones Plantarum. Only
about sixteen of the woodcuts are original (cf Case 1).
