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

Hardcover | 25.15 x 4.32 x 29.21 cm | 452 pp

Yale University Press | 2019 |9780965450812

This authoritative and magnificently illustrated book on herbals describes rare books, manuscripts, and other works of art conserved at the Oak Spring Garden Library, Upperville, Virginia, a collection formed over 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 Distant Lands’; ‘Herbals by Herbalists, Pharmacists, and Physicians’; ‘Herbals of the Botanical Gardens and Private Gardens of Europe’;’Curious and Strange Herbals’; Dried Specimens and Nature Printing’; and ‘American Herbals.

In her introduction the author provides insight into the early history of the herbal, explaining in depth 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.