A Cultural History of Plants presents a global exploration of how plants have shaped human culture. Covering the last 12,000 years, it is the definitive history of how we have cultivated, traded, classified, and altered plants and how, in turn, plants have influenced our ideas of luxury and wealth, health and well-being, art and architecture.
Chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six.
The themes (and chapter titles) are: Plants as Staple Foods; Plants as Luxury Foods; Trade and Exploration; Plant Technology and Science; Plants and Medicine; Plants in Culture; Plants as Natural Ornaments; The Representation of Plants.
The six volumes cover: 1 - Antiquity (10,000 BCE to 500 CE); 2 - Post-Classical Era (500 to 1400); 3 - Early Modern Era (1400 to 1650); 4 - the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1650 to 1800); 5 - the Nineteenth Century(1800 to 1920); 6 - Modern Era (1920 to the present).
The page extent for the pack is 1744pp. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors and an Introduction and concludes with Notes, Bibliography, and an Index.
The Cultural Histories SeriesA Cultural History of Plants is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).
Giesecke, Annette: - Annette Giesecke, PhD, is a specialist in the history, meaning, and representation of ancient gardens and designed landscapes at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She is General Editor of the six volume A Cultural History of Plants (Bloomsbury 2022) and editor of Volume 1 (Antiquity) and co-editor of Volume 3 (Early Modern). Her other works include Classical Mythology A to Z (2020) and The Mythology of Plants (2014). She is General Editor of the six volume A Cultural History of Nature (Bloomsbury, forthcoming).
Mabberley, David: - David J. Mabberley AM, DSc is Director Emeritus, Botanic Gardens of Sydney, Australia, Emeritus Professor in the University of Leiden, Netherlands, and Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, University of Oxford, UK. He was, consecutively, Director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, Seattle, USA; Keeper of the Herbarium, Library, Art and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK; Executive Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. He has had visiting posts in the University of Paris; Kuwait University; Universities of Peradeniya and Sri Jawarardenepura, Sri Lanka; University of Sydney; Western Sydney University; and Macquarie University, where he is Adjunct Professor. He has over three hundred and fifty publications, ranging over plant ecology and systematics to the history of science and botanical illustration. His most recent books include Mabberley's Plant-book: A Dictionary of Plants, their Classification and Uses (2017); Painting by Numbers: The life and art of Ferdinand Bauer (2017); Sir Joseph Banks' Florilegium (2017); Botanical Revelation (2019) and Citrus: A World History (2024).
