A Compleat Herbal

James Newton's folio herbal shows the plants themselves: copperplate engravings of everything an eighteenth-century physician or gardener might need to recognise, from asphodels and adder's tongue to the mandrake and the mulberry.

About the Book

1752Published
James NewtonAuthor
5Plates

James Newton's Compleat Herbal is an eighteenth-century atlas of plants — not a book of prose with pictures, but a book of pictures with a finding aid. Its copperplates show the plants themselves, and its index tells you which plate to turn to.

It opens with something rarer than either: an alphabetical table of the authorities, ancient and modern, with their principal botanic writings, the year each was published, the country the author came from, and — tellingly — how many plant figures each book contained.

This site gives every surviving plate its own page, with the engravings shown large, alongside the authors' table and the plant index that make the atlas navigable.

This site reproduces the complete text of the original 1752 edition, digitized page by page from the original printing. The book is in the public domain.

Rights & ReuseThe complete text of A Compleat Herbal (1752) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.