This edition was the first to feature Thomson's charming illustrations, depicting both indoor and outdoor scenes while notably prioritizing well-dressed human figures over Allen's lovingly described gardens and woods.

Binding:  Publisher's olive cloth, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped branch and bird designs (unsigned).

•  BAL 468; Wright, III, 76 & 80 (for first eds.).   Binding as above, spine and board edges sunned. Page edges untrimmed; one signature carelessly opened. Aesthetically pleasing, culturally intriguing, and sure to be of interest to both birders and gardeners. (37531)

Provenance:  Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of Alexander Oswald Brodie (not, please note, the American officer and governor of Arizona Territory); title-page with Brodie's inked inscription, dated 1839, Dresden.

•  Brunet, I, 604; Gibson, Bacon, 185b; Willems 1058. On Bacon, see: Dictionary of National Biography.   Contemporary vellum with yapp edges, spine with early inked title; spine lettering rubbed, back cover darkened. Both pastedowns lifted, front pastedown with bookplate beneath; free endpapers lacking. Title-page with inscription as above; pages with a very few small scattered spots, almost entirely clean. A handsome copy.  (30360)

•  Publisher's half-tone color-printed paper wrappers as above, with a river scene glowing in the “eye” of one of the pansies; spine rubbed, one tiny spot of staining or fading near front upper edge. Pages gently age-toned. A patent medicine give-away not, originally, meant to be much less ephemeral than the little flower it celebrates.  (36568)

•  Drake 707; Shaw & Shoemaker 13185.   Removed from a nonce volume and resewn.  (9489)

Binding: Contemporary treed calf. Spine with gilt-stamped red leather title label, gilt-stamped compartment lines, and floral devices within compartments.

•  Brunet, II, 576. Binding somewhat rubbed and starting to crack over joints, though very firm; some onetime water exposure visible on front cover (a not entirely unattractive effect). Pages with a bit of very minor spotting, and some offsetting from plates. An attractive copy of a pretty book.  (8295)

Provenance:  College of Pharmacy of the City of New York.

Evidence of readership: A reader of the late 16th century has corrected some of the text and has added interesting marginalia in Latin that expounds or expands on sections of it. A later reader, probably of the late 18th or early 19th century, has labeled some of the woodcut illustrations with the plant names using Linnaean and post-Linnaean taxonyms. For example some have “W” at the end of the Latin name, for Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765–1812), others “Schmidt” for F.W. Schmidt (1764–96), most just have an “L” at the end, for Linnaeus.

•  Pritzel 2350; Nissen, Botanische Buchillustration, 517; Hunt Botanical Catalogue 143; Nissen 517; DSB, IV,138–9. Voet, Plantin Press, 1101; Adams D722; Arents, Adds., 74; Alden & Landis 583/23; Index Aurel. 154.557; Bibliographia Belgica D117.   Recent quarter mottled brown calf with green and red stone-pattern marbled paper sides; raised bands, each accented above and below by single gilt rule and with gilt center devices in five spine compartments. Library stamp as above on title-page and three other pages. Minor worming in some, a very few, margins, most notable in upper margins of pp. 260–89; gently age-toned, and a few leaves with browning or foxing; overalla crisp, clean, decidedly desirable copy.  (34549)

There is, to us, a surprising and very interesting section on grapes and wines. The first part of our caption delights partly in discovery that maize, the “corn” of the U.S., is here called “turkey wheat” — with further note that you can make bread of it, but that the result is pleasing only to “barbarous” tastes! The entry as a whole showsGerard at his characteristic best, at once scientifically systematic and engagingly discursive.

Provenance:  Neatly lettered name of “W. Younge” at top of title-page; it is tempting to attribute this to William Younge, physician of Sheffield and Fellow of the Royal Linnean Society, whose online correspondence shows him to have been an eager collector of botanical books.

•  STC (rev. ed.) 11752; Alden & Landis, European Americana, 636/25; Nissen, Botanischebuchs, 698n; Pritzel 3282n; Johnston, The Cleveland Herbal, Botanical, and Horticultural Collections, 185; Woodward, Gerard's Herball: The essence thereof distilled (London, 1964). On the source of the blocks, see: Hunt Botanical Catalogue and Bowen, K. L., & D. Imhof, The illustration of Books Published by the Moretuses (Antwerpen, 1997). For “Turkey Wheat, “ see: Gerard, p. 81; for polenta, p. 71.   Late 17th-century English calf, plain style; rebacked professionally in the 20th century, later endpapers. As usual, without the first and last blank leaves. Three leaves with natural paper flaws in blank margins. A very good copy.  (34500)

•  Publisher's grey cloth–covered boards, front cover and spine with gilt- and red-stamped decorative title, in original dust jacket and color-printed box; jacket price-clipped with light edge wear and two short tears just starting from foot of spine, box gently faded with edges and extremities rubbed and cream-colored portions showing mild spotting, volume with front board slightly sprung, book itself otherwise clean and unworn. A nice copy, complete with both jacket and box. (40966)

•  ESTC S104120; Henrey, I, 200; Hunt Botanical Cat., 167; Luborsky & Ingram, Guide to English Illustrated Books, 13495; Graesse, III, 279. Not in Adams or Brunet.   Early 20th-century half blue cloth and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine and edges sunned to tan, cloth showing some minor bubbling. Lacking pages 57/58, 65–68, and 83/84 as well as the final appendix as described above. Two leaves with unobtrusive, neatly done repairs and one with slightly more noticeable repair, not obscuring sense; one leaf with small hole and short tear in upper outer corner, not touching text. Center of volume with small area of worming at lower inner portions, generally in between lines but occasionally touching a few letters. Pages age-toned, some with mild to moderate waterstaining in most outer margins, with last portion more generally and darkly stained; scattered spots of mild staining and foxing elsewhere. Imperfect, and so priced, but still scarce and desirable.  (37841)

Langham's organization is this: “He devoted a chapter to each plant, describing its parts and their uses, the different processes such as distillation that could be applied to it, and how the resulting products could be used for particular diseases. To every item of information he added a number and at the end of the chapter there is an index or table of conditions with the numbers that were in the main text. The reader can thus see at a glance that one herb could be used in a wide variety of conditions, and whether a specific illness could be helped by a particular drug” (Wear, pp. 82–83).

This is the second edition, “corrected and amended,” the first having appeared in 1597. We are sure the reading public, which was sufficient to support a second edition, would have been helped rather more if the work had had illustrations, but that would have increased the cost of the work dramatically and awide audience was sought. The text is printed chiefly in gothic type while the end of chapter “indices” are in roman. This herbal was not printed during a period of good English typography, so the pages are dense with little white space or appreciation for making the text on the page easy on the eye rather than wearying.

•  ESTC S108241; STC (rev. ed.) 15196; Alden & Landis 633/67; Huth Library 817. On Langham, see Andrew Wear, Knowledge & Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680.   Contemporary English calf, boards modestly ruled in blind at edges; rebacked in high quality goat. Age-toning or old soiling, especially at the edges of margins and with offsetting from binding to title-page; some light marginal waterstaining especially at end in index; some tears (one shown here) with last leaves' edges chopped and final two with edges strengthened.Overall, an unsophisticated copy that has been spared being washed, pressed, and gussied up.  (34545)

Binding:  Publisher's purple cloth, gilt-stamped title on spine; each cover framed in blind rules, with foliate and drawer-handle motifs surrounding a gilt leaf device at center. All edges gilt.

•  Bound as above, almost entirely sunned to brown and with a very little rubbing. Light to moderate age-toning and foxing throughout; lacks frontispiece, other three plates present and brightly colored. Overall a handsomely done collection of letters about roses (and life).  (35940)

•  NSTC 2S5136.   Publisher's brown cloth, covers framed and panelled in blind with blind-stamped strapwork corner decorations, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped decorative title; unobtrusively rebacked preserving most of original spine, cloth sunned and mottled, corners/edges refurbished and hinges (inside) reinforced. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. Author's name inked in an early hand on the title-page (which gives “By an Epicure” only). Pages lightly age-toned with various spottings and stainings and a few marks of emphasis; some corners creased with a very few torn away. Aged but not displeasingly so, especially given this work's affection for all things vintage and evocatively nostalgic.  (32308)