This engraving is from Blackwell's self-published 'Curious Herbal' of 1737.
It has original hand-colouring from the time of publication.
Elizabeth Simpson was the daughter of the painter Leonard Simpson.
She married badly and her husband, who practiced medicine without proper qualifications, was imprisoned for a number of years, leaving her with no income, a house to run, and a child to raise. Therefore, Blackwell decided to put to use her training as an artist. She learned that a herbal was needed to depict and describe exotic plants from the New World. She decided that she could illustrate it and that Alexander, given his (somewhat dubious) medical background, but nonetheless educated in the Classics, could write the descriptions of the plants. As she completed the drawings, Blackwell would take them to her husband's cell, where he supplied the correct names in Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and German.
While women had a long history of gathering and preparing plants for medicinal use in domestic settings, there were few options for formal education or entrance to learned societies at the time. Elizabeth resolved to gain the patronage of the Royal College of Physicians and the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, who were responsible for the operation of the Apothecaries’ Garden, which we now know as the Chelsea Physic Garden.
Elizabeth was taken under the wing of Issac Rand, the Garden’s director, and she took rooms near the garden. She now had access to one of the most impressive collections of plants in the world. She was perfectly placed to document the garden’s many indigenous plants, as well as specimens arriving from across the British Empire. Elizabeth decided to issue a book in weekly parts or ‘sets’ to buyers who subscribed in advance, which guaranteed her a regular stream of income throughout the project. Each set comprised four botanical illustrations plus a page of descriptive text,adapted from Joseph Miller’s 1722 herbal Botanicum officinale. She painstakingly drew each of the plants from live specimens in the Apothecaries’ Garden, engraved the copper plates, and for those subscribers willing to pay an extra shilling, hand-coloured them. She kept up this rate of weekly production for a staggering 125 weeks.
In the early eighteenth century, plants were an essential resource for healthcare and Elizabeth designed the herbal to help her readers, including doctors and apothecaries, to develop an “exact knowledge” of their uses and effects in medicine. Choosing the right plant to treat an ailment was an increasingly precise science, and mistaking one plant for another could have severe consequences. A 'Curious Herbal' provided the latest guidance on the physical characteristics of plants; where and when they could be found; their names in a variety of languages; and their curative properties.
Although only a modest success at the time of publication, the proceeds from a 'Curious Herbal' helped Elizabeth to secure her husband's release from prison, but he continued to accumulate debts, and Elizabeth was forced to sell the rights of her book to the bookseller John Nourse. to clear her husband's debts. However, by this time, her husband was in Sweden – having effectively abandoned his wife and child. Somehow he managed to find employment at the Swedish Royal Court, but he was soon to charged with treason after becoming embroiled in a dynastic power struggle and was beheaded on 29 July 1747. Elizabeth did not remarry and died in London in 1758. Sadly, we know very little about her later life. A 'Curious Herbal' is her only known published work, but it remains a landmark book in the fields of medical botany and botanical illustration and stands as a testament to her remarkable strength of purpose, expertise, and creative powers.
