PARADISI IN SOLE PARADISUS TERRESTRIS or A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp. by PARKINSON, John, 1567-1650.: - 1629

London, printed by Humfrey Lownes and Robert Young at the signe of the Starre on Bread-street hill, 1629.. With a KITCHEN garden of all manner of herbes, rootes, & fruites, for meate or sause vsed with vs, and an ORCHARD of all sorte of fruit bearing trees and shrubbes fit for our land together with the right orderinge planting & preseruing of them and their vses & vertues collected by Iohn Parkinson apothecary of London 1629. FIRST EDITION FIRST ISSUE USING THE OLD USAGE OF THE LETTERS U & V ( V instead of U and U instead of V), line 4 on A1 recto ending "amend". In the later issue the spelling was corrected. Small folio, approximately 320 x 190 mm, 12½ x 8 inches, wood engraved allegorical title page "Garden of Eden", showing the legendary 'plant animal', known as the 'vegetable lamb of Tartary', portrait of Parkinson facing page 1, a further 110 full page illustrations, each with numerous figures of flowers, vegetables and fruit, plus 3 text illustrations, woodcut head- and tailpieces and a few initials. Pages: xii, 1-612, [16] - indexes, rebound in full speckled calf, gilt lettered label, author's name and gilt decoration with date at foot to spine, blind rules to edges of covers, new marbled endpapers plus cream fly leaves. Title trimmed and laid down on old paper, lacks the black rule round the image and the margins, no loss to image, a little bleed through of old ink from blank side of title, narrow repair to outer edge of dedication leaf and a small repair to blank side (dedicated to Queen Henrietta Maria, for which Charles I gave Parkinson the title of Botanicus Regius Primarius), 2 outer margins repaired with old paper and browned, not touching text, last page of index repaired by amateur with loss to about 12 lines of text and part of colophon, all outer edges of index leaves repaired with slight loss of words or numbers, patch of browning to outer margins of 12 leaves which all have small section of strengthening with archival tape (see attached images), other small edge repairs in places, no loss of text, old ink name to bottom of dedication page and another under the printer's device in index, some light horizontal creasing to a few pages, mostly at beginning, occasional pale staining and old ink spot and fox spot, a few other minor faults, otherwise a good copy. See: Blanche Henrey, British Botanical and Horticultural Literature before 1800, Volume 1, page 263, No. 282, and Volume 2, pages 10, 98 & 659; H. Frederic Janson, Pomona's Harvest, pages 78-80; The Cleveland Herbal, Botanical and Horticultural Collections, page 165, No.179; Rachel Hunt, Catalogue of Botanical Books, Volume 1, page 234, No. 215, stating: " One of the most beloved of all English books on gardening"; Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals, pages 142-44, which gives a little information on the "Vegetable Lamb"; John Evelyn had a copy in his library, Christie's, Rhe Evelyn Library, Part 3, page 80, No. 1134; Parkinson was apothecary and botanist to Charles I, and a large number of the nearly 1000 plants described in this book were grown by the author himself in his garden at Long Acre. The book is filled with references to contemporary botanists and gardeners, and provides one of the best single sources of information on gardening practices and styles in early 17th-century England, "in such a delightful, homey style that gardeners cherish it to the present day" (Hunt). MORE IMAGES ATTACHED TO THIS LISTING, ALL ZOOMABLE, FURTHER IMAGES ON REQUEST. POSTAGE AT COST.