Peter Schoeffer published the first expressly vernacular herbal, Der Gart der Gesundheit ( The Garden of Good Health), in 1485, and it was quickly reprinted and translated into other languages, its numerous pirated editions readily demonstrating that there was a lucrative market for vernacular books about plants. Theophrastus, Aristotle’s pupil and Lyceum contemporary whose Enquiry into Plants influenced Pliny, initially found his way into print in Treviso in 1483. By that time, printed editions of classical works had already been increasing rapidly on the continent, including texts that contained accounts of plants: Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, with its chapters on plants in books 4–6, was first printed in Venice in 1469 and was regularly reprinted thereafter. Written forms for herb lore extended back long before the English language, and those lists of plant descriptions and medical remedies, or “book containing the names and descriptions of herbs, or of plants in general, with their properties and virtues” ( OED n.1), became a popular genre in Renaissance England within a few decades of William Caxton’s importation of printing to Westminster. As objects, individual copies of early English herbals were not only read and consulted but also inscribed and illuminated, purchased and bequeathed. For almost a century before it was an adjective, the word “herbal” was a noun.

Textify gerard mooney