The first recorded woman to produce an herbal, Elizabeth Blackwell, was born Elizabeth Simpson. In a preface to a copy of her herbal held in the Rubenstein Library at Duke University, she describes her education in art as coming from her father Leonard, a painter, before his untimely death while she was still a girl. She also refers to a lifelong love of plants and to the experience she gleaned from constantly drawing the natural world around her. It seems that this artistic education and background provided E. Blackwell with the skills necessary to undertake her illustrated herbal: A Curious Herbal containing five hundred cuts of the most useful plants which are now used in the Practise of Physick, to which is added a short description of ye plants and their common uses in Physick (1737–1739). A Curious Herbal was engraved and hand coloured by E. Blackwell. She undertook this ambitious project to support her family when her husband Alexander’s bankruptcy caused the loss of his business and plunged the family into financial ruin.

To facilitate access to botanical specimens, she and her family moved near the Chelsea Physic Garden, where she befriended the garden’s director, Isaac Rand. E. Blackwell’s access to fresh specimens with origins both within and outside of Europe was made much easier by this proximity. Her project also benefitted from relationships she cultivated among the medical and intellectual elite, including Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Richard Meade. In the Rubenstein Library preface, she credits access to specimens, texts and experts as enabling her to add the written components of her herbal to her renderings. Crucial to its success, A Curious Herbal received an official commendation from the Royal College of Physicians. Capitalising on this support, E. Blackwell advertised her publication through word of mouth and journal advertisements.

E. Blackwell’s herbal filled a need for an illustrated botanical treatise that included so-called “curious” non-European specimens alongside native plants. First issued in weekly instalments between 1737 and 1739, the completed publication contained 500 engraved plates in two volumes, with all plates and text engraved by E. Blackwell. Although from whom or when is unknown, she learned to engrave well enough to keep all of the work within her own purview, something that, along with colouring the prints herself, allowed her to keep much of the profits from the sales of her publication.

Seventy-three original drawings for the Curious Herbal are held in the collection of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Upperville, Virginia. Hand-coloured first editions of the work are found in the Foundation’s collection, as well as the British Library, and the David M. Rubenstein Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Duke University Durham, North Carolina.