Gerard, John
THE HERBALL OR GENERALL HISTORIE OF PLANTES. LONDON: JOHN NORTON, 1597
folio (327 x 225mm.), first edition, engraved title by William Rogers, engraved portrait of Gerard by Rogers, woodcut illustrations on almost every page, all with contemporary hand-colour, mid-seventeenth-century calf, rebacked in the late eighteenth century with spine gilt in compartments, the sixth panel with the gilt cypher “SX” of the Earl of Essex, rebacked again in the mid-twentieth-century with the earlier spine laid down, engraved title washed and carefully repaired in lower margin and corner, some paper flaws (e.g. p.601/602 with slight loss), rust-holes, tears and other minor defects
Read Condition Report
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Saleroom Notice
Thomasin Tunstall, manuscript annotations
Richard Whitaker (fl. 1619-48), bookseller and publisher who married Joyce Norton (d. 1643), the widow of John Norton I (1556/7-1612) who had published Gerard's Herball in 1597, affadavit: “Decemb the 3d 1632 Memorand I doe warrant this to bee of the last Impression Perfect and if Mr Capell please to change it for one of the new Impression when it cometh out he giving mee twenty shillings and this Booke I doe promise to take it agayne if it be so well condition as now wittness my hand the day and yeare above written Richard Whittaker.”
Arthur Capel, later 1st Baron Capel of Hadham (1610?-1649), of Hadham Hall, Hertfordshire, thence by descent; by descent through the Earls of Essex, Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire, with their gilt “SX” cypher beneath an earl's coronet on the spine
Irene Ruth Marden, née Hawkshaw (1898-1965), bookplate. Marden was a collector of herbals and author, as Irene Gosse, of A Florilege: Chosen from Old Herbals (1931)
Henrey 154; Hunt 174; Nissen BBI 698; STC 11750; Catherine Horwood, Gardening Women (Virago Press, 2010), pp.9-10; Anna Parkinson, Nature's Alchemist: John Parkinson, Herbalist to Charles I (Francis Lincoln, 2005), pp.248-249