Paradisi in Sole: Paradisus Terrestris faithfully reprinted from the edition of 1629

Pp. (4), a-k, 1-612, 1-16 (index + contents); title page with decorated floral woodcut, woodcut portrait of Parkinson, 110 full page plates - all are fine woodcuts of floral species.  Later full tan morocco, spine with five raised bands lettered in gilt in one compartment, front and rear covers tooled in blind and with blind-stamped small floral decorations, thick folio (14.5 x 9 inches).  The long subtitle listed on the decorated floral title page reads: “… or a garden of all sorts of pleasant floras … with a kitchen garden of all manner of herbs, roots and fruits, for meat or sauce used with cuts, and an orchard of all sorts of fruit-bearing trees and shrubs fit for our land together with the ordering of planting and preserving of them and their uses and virtues.”  This is almost certainly the most famous English gardening book of the 17^th century.  The work is based on Parkinson’s own gardens.  The title can be roughly translated to ‘Park in the Sun’ which is how the author viewed his own fine gardens.  This high quality facsimile reprint is very attractively bound in highly decorated tan morocco.  “John Parkinson (1567–1650) was the last of the great English herbalists and one of the first of the great English botanists.  He was apothecary to James I and a founding member of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in December 1617, and was later Royal Botanist to Charles I.  His most monumental work was Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (Park-in-Sun's Terrestrial Paradise), which generally describes the proper cultivation of plants in England” (modified after Wiki entry).  See also Pritzel 6933.  No ownership marks and no signs of use.