An Oak Spring Herbaria: A Selection of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Works of Art

Description

Hardcover | 25.15 x 4.32 x 29.21 cm | 452 pp

Yale University Press | 2019 | 9780965450812

This authoritative and magnificently illustrated book on herbalsdescribes rare books, manuscripts, and otherworks of art conserved at the Oak Spring GardenLibrary, Upperville, Virginia, a collection formedover many years by Rachel Lambert Mellon.
The author has selected sixty-three works from the Library’s extensive collections.

The volume is thematically organised and arranged into the following chapters:
‘Late Medieval Herbals’; The Great Age of Renaissance Botany’;’Herbals and Plants from DistantLands’; ‘Herbals by Herbalists, Pharmacists, andPhysicians’; ‘Herbals of the Botanical Gardens andPrivate Gardens of Europe’;’Curious and StrangeHerbals’; Dried Specimens and Nature Printing’;and ‘American Herbals.

In her introduction the author provides insightinto the early history of the herbal, explaining indepth its creation, development, and use. The catalogue surveys the herbal down through the nineteenth century, with detailed entries from manuscript herbals to editions of the Hortus Sanitatis,The Grete Herball, Brunfels, Fuchs, Mattioli, Turner,Clusius, Dodoens, Culpeper, Durante, Alpini, Monardes, della Porta, Linnaeus, among others, and including such Amercian herbals as those of Jacob
Bigelow and C. S. Rafinesque.

This authoritative catalogue will prove fascinating to illustrators, botanists, bibliophiles, garden historians, and herbalists alike.