Chapter 1 explores why the sixteenth century was called “ocularcentric,” that is, how imagery came to be considered an authentic representation of truth. Contemporaries recognized a variety of kinds of imagery, some understood to be realistic representations, others as fabulous. It outlines the burgeoning of printed materials – books, maps, pamphlets – in the very first centuries after Gutenberg, focusing on early modern Europeans’ curiosity about describing their world, not only overseas discoveries but “chorographies” of European lands as well. All of this invited illustration, not always well regulated for accuracy. The chapter concludes by exploring how publishers designed early printed books and visual images.

John Gerard’s Herball of 1597 was remarkably successful: it was twice reprinted, and it remained an authoritative botanical textbook through the eighteenth century. Copies of the book were regularly bequeathed by name in wills, and as we have seen, poets such as John Milton profitably mined its descriptions for details about plants and their uses. Yet, despite the evidence of Gerard’s wide renown among his contemporaries, his reputation as a herbalist has suffered from accusations of plagiarism that have plagued discussions of his work since the publication of the book’s revised second edition in 1633. This chapter explains how this narrative about Gerard’s 1597 Herball came about, paying close attention to the perspectives of the volume’s publishers to reveal that the logic of the traditional account of Gerard as a plagiarist makes little sense in the context of early modern herbal publication.