Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, Containing 500 Cuts, of The Most Useful Plants Which Are Now Used in The Practice of Physic, was one of the first English botanical books to be issued in parts as well as one of the first to contain hand colored plates.
Elizabeth Blackwell undertook the publication of her Herbal at the suggestion of Sir Hans Sloane in order to ransom her husband from debtors prison. She took lodgings near the Chelsea Physic Garden where she drew and engraved the plants growing there. The book was a commercial success which allowed her to succeed in freeing her husband, although to no avail. Mr. Blackwell was later beheaded in Sweden for his part in a political assassination plot.
