A Curious Herbal: Elizabeth Blackwell's Pioneering Masterpiece of Botanical Art

A complete edition of the first herbal published by a woman artist — which has a remarkable backstory.

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 500 of her exquisite plates. Blackwell not only made the drawings, but prepared the copper plates and personally hand-coloured 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 passion for art and nature, and her vision for the herbal. Two introductory texts contextualise 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.

A Curious Herbal will be essential for all lovers of botanical art, and for anyone interested in women’s history and the history of science.

About the Authors:

Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden. She has authored several books, including Unearthing “The Secret Garden” and All the Presidents’ Gardens. Janet Stiles Tyson, an independent scholar, wrote her doctoral dissertation on Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herb

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