The Ex-Classics Web Site
Find Books Author Index Subject Index Title Index Search Site	In Preparation Gerard's Herbal This vast and exhaustive work of early modern botany, illustrated with nearly two thousand woodcuts,  had its final edition in 1633.  Almost every plant known to European  herbalists at the time is included, with a picture, description, uses, and   anecdotes of the plant, its discoverers and much more.  Part of our Gossip in a Library project -- see here for Gosse's  article. Volumes 1 and 2 are now available -- the rest will follow The Life of John Buncle, by Thomas Amory. Thomas Amory (1691-1788) had a very long and adventurous life. John Buncle (1758) was his only novel. Part of our Gossip in a Library project -- see here for Gosse's article; and in Gosse's words: "No odder book than John Buncle was published in England throughout the long life of Amory. Romances there were, like Gulliver's Travels and Peter Wilkins, in which the incidents were much more incredible, but there was no supposition that these would be treated as real history. The curious feature of John Buncle is that the story is told with the strictest attention to realism and detail, and yet is embroidered all over with the impossible. There can be no doubt that Amory, who belonged to an older school, was affected by the form of the new novels which were the fashion in 1756. He wished to be as particular as Mr. Richardson, as manly as Captain Fielding, as breezy and vigorous as Dr. Smollett, the three new writers who were all the talk of the town.  . . . . . . To lovers of odd books, John Buncle will always have a genuine attraction. Its learning would have dazzled Dr. Primrose, and is put on in glittering spars and shells, like the ornaments of the many grottoes that it describes. It is diversified by descriptions of natural scenery, which are often exceedingly felicitous and original, and it is quickened by the human warmth and flush of the love passages, which, with all their quaintness, are extremely human" The Black Book by Thomas Middleton Trading on the reputation of Robert Greene, who promised a work called The Black Book (in his "Black Book's Messenger") but did not live to write it, Middleton produced this short account of Elizabethan low life and low-lifes. It introduces such characters as Joan Silver Pin, a brothel-keeper who was "Fair without and foul within."	Extras Latest Additions In preparation All the books as one Zip file Ex-classics at Other Web Sites