A CURIOUS HERBAL

In the 1730s, Elizabeth Blackwell (1699-c. 1758) found herself penniless, with her ne´er-do-well husband confined to a London debtor´s prison. A talented artist, she came up with a unique and ambitious moneymaking scheme: the publication of a new illustrated guide to medicinal plants, including many New World species not depicted in earlier books. Blackwell´s Curious Herbal, published between 1737 and 1739, was hailed for its usefulness to doctors and apothecaries and met with considerable financial success.This magnificent volume-the first modern edition of Blackwell´s herbal-reproduces all five hundred of her exquisite plates. Blackwell not only made the drawings, but prepared the copper plates and personally hand-colored them. Her handwritten descriptions of the plants, which she creatively adapted (with permission) from Joseph Miller´s Botanicum Officinale, retain considerable interest. This book features a previously unknown preface by Blackwell, in which she reveals her passionfor art and nature, and her vision for the herbal. Two introductory texts contextualize Blackwell´s achievement: the noted garden writer Marta McDowell explores the history of herbals as a genre, and the state of botanical knowledge in Blackwell´s time; and the historian Janet Stiles Tyson relates the artist´s rather extraordinary biography.