Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade
English Stationers and the Commodification of Botany

In the early modern herbal, Sarah Neville finds a captivating example of how Renaissance print culture shaped scientific authority.

Sarah Neville (Author)

9781316515990, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 January 2022

290 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.58 kg

'This is a unique text … Libraries with collections covering the history of the book and printing, the history of medicine, or Renaissance English literature would do well to add this volume to their shelves … Highly recommended.' R. C. Hedreen, Choice

Between 1525 and 1640, a remarkable phenomenon occurred in the world of print: England saw the production of more than two dozen editions identified by their imprints or by contemporaries as 'herbals'. Sarah Neville explains how this genre grew from a series of tiny anonymous octavos to authoritative folio tomes with thousands of woodcuts, and how these curious works quickly became valuable commodities within a competitive print marketplace. Designed to serve readers across the social spectrum, these rich material artifacts represented both a profitable investment for publishers and an opportunity for authors to establish their credibility as botanists. Highlighting the shifting contingencies and regulations surrounding herbals and English printing during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the book argues that the construction of scientific authority in Renaissance England was inextricably tied up with the circumstances governing print. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Prologue. Milton's trees
Introduction. Authorizing English botany
Part I. A History of Herbals: 1. Authorship, book history, and the effects of artifacts
2. The stationers' company and constraints on English printing
3. Salubrious illustration and the economics of English herbals
Part II. Anonymity in the Printed English Herbal: 4. Reframing competition: the curious case of the little Herball
5. The Grete Herball and evidence in the margins
6. 'Unpublished virtues of the earth': books of healing on the English renaissance stage
Part III. Authors and the Printed English Herbal: 7. William Turner and the medical book trade
8. John Norton and the redemption of John Gerard.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Social & cultural history [HBTB], British & Irish history [HBJD1], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]