Dodoens’s Herbal In English
New Herball, or Historie of Plants. Wherein is contained the whole discourse and perfect description of all sorts of herbes and plants: their diuers and sundrie kindes: their names, natures, operations, & vertues: and that not onely of those which are heere growing in this our countrie of England but of al others also of forraine realms commonly vsed in physicke. First set foorth in the Dutch or Almaigne toong, by that learned D. Rembert Dodoens, phisition to the Emperor: and now first translated out of French into English, by Henrie Lyte Esquier. Corrected and Amended.
London: Edm. Bollifant, 1595.
Full Description:
DODOENS, Rembert. A New Herball, or Historie of Plants. Wherein is contained the whole discourse and perfect description of all sorts of herbes and plants: their diuers and sundrie kindes: their names, natures, operations, & vertues: and that not onely of those which are heere growing in this our countrie of England but of al others also of forraine realms commonly vsed in physicke. First set foorth in the Dutch or Almaigne toong, by that learned D. Rembert Dodoens, phisition to the Emperor: and now first translated out of French into English, by Henrie Lyte Esquier. Corrected and Amended. London: Edm. Bollifant, 1595.
Third edition. Octavo (7 x 5 1/4 inches; 180 x 135 mm). [40], 916, [48] pp.. Translated by Henry Lyte from Charles de l’Écluse’s 1557 French version of Dodoens’s Cruydeboeck (Antwerp: 1554). Title-page within woodcut border. With woodcut head and tail-pieces and historiated initals.
Contemporary full speckled calf. Boards ruled in blind. All edges red. Bound without front pastedown and rear endpapers. Previous owner's armorial bookplate on inside of front board. Early ink drawings and ownership notes on front free endpaper and verso of title-page. A few leaves in first and final gatherings and a few others including title-page reinforced with tissue at margins, bit with no loss of text. Leaves M3-M8 with closed tears, professionally repaired and with no loss of text. Some minor marginal dampstaining and soiling Still overall a very good copy.
Dodoens (1517-1585) was the first of the great Flemish botanists, “and in both his Cruydeboeck, 1554, and his Stirpium Historia Pemptades Sex, 1583...he helped to forward the growing interest in classification which had begun to be evident as early as 1539 in Bock’s Neu Kreuterbuch” (Hunt 67). The Cruydeboeck, his first botanical book, “was a national herbarium devoted to species indigenous to the Flemish provinces. The merit of this book was that rather than proceeding by alphabetical order, as Fuchs had done, Dodoens grouped the plants according to their properties and their reciprocal affinities” (D.S.B.).
Henry Lyte prepared his English translation with care, comparing “the last Douch copy” of the Cruydeboeck with the French version, and making corrections and additions. “After Lyte had finished his work, Rembert Dodoens sent fresh material, which the English translator incorporated in A nievve herball. Lyte’s own copy of de l’Écluse’s version [Histoire des plantes] is now preserved in the British Library (Bloomsbury). It contains numerous notes in French and English, written in red and black ink, and in a neat, clear hand. References to Turner and de l’Obel are inserted, and the book is carefully annotated and corrected” (Henrey, p. 36).
The English Dodoens provided English literature with source material of great importance, as there were few books in English at the time purely devoted to plants. As Anderson (An Illustrated History of the Herbals, p. 178) remarks, the Lyte translation “may well have supplied Shakespeare with much of the plant lore used in his plays.”
ESTC S109768. [Regarding 1st English]:Henrey 110. Hunt 132. Nissen, BBI, 516. NLM/Durling 1171. Plesch, pp. 204-205. Pritzel 2345. Wellcome 1814.
HBS 69583.
$4,500.
Price: $4,500.00
Item #69583