All editions of the Herball are a part of the William C. Gibson Memorial Collection in the RBSC.  William C. Gibson was a part of the UBC Faculty of Medicine from 1950-1978 (“Fonds”).  He was a collector of medical and history related books, and donated his collection to the UBC Charles Woodward Memorial collection (“Fonds”).  From my experience in the UBC RBSC, there are books from the Woodward Memorial collection (in Woodward library) that have been moved to and archived in the RBSC.  It should be noted that the 1597 edition of the Herball is cataloged in the Messerschmidt collection as well as the Gibson collection.  There is not a lot of information available on Henry Messerschmidt, aside from the fact that he donated 55 item collection to the library in the 2006/07 school year, and this collection contains “vernacular and Latin editions from German printers from the 15th to 18th centuries” (“The Report”).   Upon investigation, I found that Gerard’s book was one of the only English books in the collection; the majority of Messerschmidt’s collection is Latin.  The reason for the 1597 edition being a part of the Messerschmidt and Gibson collection is unknown; perhaps Messerschmidt and Gibson had some kind of collaboration, or perhaps one person bought the book from the other’s collection, but since the donation records are not made available to students, the reason why is left up to speculation.

Works Cited

“Fonds- William C. Gibson Fonds.” MemoryBC, https://www.memorybc.ca/william-c-gibson-fonds. Accessed 16 April 2018.

“The Report of the University Librarian to the Senate.” UBC Library, 9 Dec. 2007, https://about.library.ubc.ca/files/2007/12/UBC_RS_2006-07.pdf.

Accusations of plagiarism against Gerard’s Herball should be analysed carefully.  Firstly, Gerard was commissioned to write his 1597 edition by the printer John Norton (Brent Elliot, “The World of the Renaissance Herbal” 34-35; Leah Knight, “Of Books and Botany” 78).  Norton wanted an English translation of Rembert Dodoens Cruydtboeck, even though there was already an English translation (Elliot 35) made by Henry Lyte.  To complete this job, Norton first commissioned physician Robert Priest to do the translation, but unfortunately Priest died before he could complete his translation; any manuscripts he had completed have since been lost (Knight 78).  Norton then tasked the finishing of this translation to Gerard (78).  For the woodcut illustrations, Norton used the same as Tabernaemontanus (referenced in “All is Fair in Plants and Print“); he rented the woodblocks from the publisher Nicolaus Bassaeus (Elliot 35).  Gerard was tasked with arranging the illustrations to match the text (Knight 78).  The order of the plants in this text reflect that of Mattias L’Obel’s herbal (Knight 78), which may be partly because L’Obel was also hired at the same time to make corrections on the text (Elliot 35).

Oddly, it was L’Obel who would later accuse Gerard of plagiarizing his work (Elliot 35).  Gerard was accused of plagiarism a second time by apothecary Jacob Thompson, who edited and expanded upon Gerard’s work in the 1633 edition of the Herball. The 1633 and 1636 editions of the text were also publisher-commissioned works; Norton’s widow and colleagues commissioned Thompson to edit and expand on the Herball “in order to cut out a competitor” (Elliot 35).  In his “Letter to the Reader,” Thompson criticizes the late Gerard for incorrectly matching the illustrations and text and accuses him of plagiarizing the works of Dodoens (Knight 78).

Works Cited

Elliot, Brent. “The World of The Renaissance Herbal.” Renaissance Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, 2011, pp. 24-41, doi: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2010.00706.x. Accessed 13 April 2018.

Knight, Leah. Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture. Surrey, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009.

I would like to elaborate here on what “sharing” and “borrowing” of information meant in the context of 16th century herbals.  During this time, there was an increased interest in what was called “home grown herbalism” in England, where people would grow their own private gardens (Leah Knight, “Of Books and Botany” 8).  Plants were distributed in the same way as written communication: seeds and pressed plants could be mailed in envelopes, in addition to written descriptions (Knight 21).  In this way, the distribution of plants was “seen as a way of turning private property into a kind of non-textual commonplace” (Knight 21), meaning that herbalistic knowledge was considered “common stock” (78), or public rather than private.  It was common at this time for herbals to be compiled under a single name, because it was known that so much of the botanical knowledge was either shared, or cited from ancient texts (78-79).

The print culture surrounding herbals at this time was geared to towards the authentication of  “classical inheritance,” (Knight 8; Elliot 24) in addition to the “commonplacing” (Knight 22) of plant knowledge.  “Commonplacing” meant making public the invaluable knowledge, which was secluded to elite circles until the 16th century (Knight 77).  That is, herbals were usually printed only in Latin, to ensure unlicensed practitioners did not have access to the information (77).  Gerard’s work is an example of a text which engages in the herbal print culture of the 16th century, as it is characterized by the author’s correspondence with multiple sources (texts, people, etc…) as well as the fact that it is printed in the vernacular (77).

Works Cited

Elliot, Brent. “The World of The Renaissance Herbal.” Renaissance Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, 2011, pp. 24-41, doi: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2010.00706.x. Accessed 13 April 2018.

Knight, Leah. Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture. Surrey, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009.