Rosemary, A Curious Herbal Plate 159

Elizabeth Blackwell produced A Curious Herbal between 1737 and 1739 under extraordinary personal circumstances: her husband Alexander Blackwell had been imprisoned for debt, and she undertook the entire project (drawing, engraving, and hand-coloring all 500 plates) specifically to raise funds for his release. Working from specimens at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, she completed the work largely without formal artistic training, a fact that makes the accuracy and consistency of the plates, including this rosemary study, all the more remarkable. The publication was formally endorsed by the College of Physicians and dedicated to Sir Hans Sloane, lending it immediate medical and scientific authority. In the context of Georgian botanical publishing, A Curious Herbal stands as one of the few major illustrated herbals produced and engraved entirely by a single woman, and its plates were widely circulated and reprinted throughout the eighteenth century. Rosemary itself held considerable prominence in the herbalist tradition as a plant associated with memory, circulation, and preservation, making Plate 159 one of the herbal's more symbolically resonant entries.