Introduction and Contents

The Oxford University Herbaria had its origins in the mid-seventeenth century with the foundation of the Oxford Physic Garden. As well as the oldest collection of dried plant specimens in the UK, the Herbaria includes a vast collection of botanical books and illustrations from across the centuries. Amongst these is the main work published by the Scotsman Robert Morison (1620-1683), who was appointed as the first Professor of Botany in a British university in 1669. His major research project was the Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis, a new classification of the world’s plants based on fruit characteristics. Originally planned in three volumes: the second appeared in 1680, before Morison's untimely death three years later; the third volume was completed in 1699 by Jacob Bobart the Younger, second Keeper of the Oxford Physic Garden; and the first volume remained unpublished.

As well as the finished volumes, the Herbaria still possess the original engraved copper plates which produced the highly detailed illustrations, as well as some of the dried specimens from which they were taken. Despite individual plates being sponsored, the project proved enormously expensive, bringing both Morison and the University Press to the brink of financial collapse. Together, these materials offer an extraordinarly rich source for studying the production of a major scientific publication in the closing years of the seventeenth century

Contents

Introduction

1. Contributors: Individuals who contributed to the production of the Historia.

2. Raw materials: Resources used to make the Historia.

3. Morison's project: Morison’s vision of the Historia and its construction.

4. Promoting Morison's project: Morison’s first published form of the Historia.

5. Funding Morison's project: People who funded the copper-plate illustrations.

6. Illustrating Morison's project: Linking plants and printed images.

7. Printing Morison's illustrations: Linking copper plates and printed images.

8. Proofs of Morison's prints: Modifying copper plates in the publication process.

9. Legacy of Morison's project: Legacy of the Historia.

The collection of material presented here uses a unique corpus of material from collections in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University Herbaria and the Department of Plant Sciences. These materials have rarely been investigated by researchers interested in the humanities. In what follows, these materials are viewed primarily through a botanical lens, providing a complementary interpretation.
 

Acknowledgements 

The material presented here is an elaboration of the presentation given on 27 February 2020 by Stephen Harris, Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford. A video of the original 52-minute presentation is available below. Professor Harris would like to thank Alexandra Franklin (Department of Special Collections, Bodleian Libraries), Scott Mandelbrote (Peterhouse, Cambridge) and the members of a Morison Seminar series for discussions surrounding the preparation and printing of Robert Morison’s Historia. Howard Hotson (Faculty of History, University of Oxford) must be thanked for suggesting that the work of Morison and Bobart was of interest beyond the work of botanical historians. All objects are from the collections of the Sherardian Library of Plant Taxonomy (Bodleian Libraries), Oxford University Herbaria and the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford (for details see references associated with individual objects). Given the prevailing conditions under when these pages were put together, access to original published works via the Biodiversity Heritage Library (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/) was indispensable. Philanthropic funding from Mr Clive Gillmore for the digisitisation of pre-Linnaean specimens in the Herbaria provided the digital resources and the impetus to summarise the University’s resources associated with Morison’s grand project. Funding for the Morison Seminar series came from the John Fell Fund.