VOLLSTÄNDIGES KRÄUTERBUCH, UND KÜNSTLICHE CONTERFEYUNGEN DER BÄUMEN

Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany: Joseph Wolffischen, 1783. Hardcover. Folio, 750 pages, 24 pages, 136 pages. In Very Good condition. Bound in brown leather with blank paneled spine. Front board with metal corner pieces and metal diamond-shaped ornament to center of board. Remnants of clasps present: two metal hooks on fore edge of front board and two torn leather strips affixed to rear board. Boards moderately rubbed. Front free end paper partially detached. Title page shows 1.25 in-long area of damage to lower edge, repaired, but resulting in loss of publication information. Title page also shows small tear, repaired, to center of page, minimally impacting legibility. Minor repairs to pages 165/166, 571/572, 633/634, 649/650, 687/688, 701/702, 705/706, 719/720.

Plates preface Parts Two and Three (pp. 165 and 567, respectively). Profusely illustrated with over 800 black and white woodcut illustrations, including genre scenes, individual plants and animals, and distilling apparatus. Shelved in Case 4. Adam Lonicer was a German botanist who studied at Marburg and the University of Mainz, obtaining his Magister degree at sixteen years of age. After becoming a Doctor of Medicine in 1554, he became the town physician in Frankfurt am Main. His true interest though was herbs and the study of botany. His first important work on herbs, the Kräuterbuch, was published in 1557, with a large part dealing with distillation. He married Magdalena Egenolff, the daughter of Christian Egenolff, his Frankfurt publisher and a printer who specialized in herbals. The work that made his name famous is this popular herbal, the Kräuterbuch. Lonicer provides us with one of the early descriptions of local flora as well as being one of the first to differentiate deciduous trees from conifers.

Complete collation: page 110 misprinted as 100, 160 as 142, 217 as 21, 271 as 217, 523 as 532, 524 as 534, 554 as 454, 732 as 571. Pagination consistent with this edition. 1277019. Shelved Dupont Bookstore.