John Ray was one of the most influential English naturalists in the seventeenth century. Born in Essex, Ray became interested in the natural world at the age of 23 following a bout of illness. He spent much of his life in Cambridge where he studied and taught a generation of naturalists, including Francis Willughby (1635-72), who would become a close friend and travel companion.

Ray spent much of his career attempting to form a universal classification system for plants and animals. Despite publishing a large body of works, Ray only produced five works on the flora and fauna of the British Isles. In 1670, he followed his botanical ‘Cambridge Catalogue’ (1660, RCIN 1055265) with a catalogue of English plants Catalogus plantarum Angliae (RCIN 1055264). The work was published by John Martyn, printer to the Royal Society and took 11 years to prepare. The catalogue was comprehensive, compiled from Ray’s several tours around the country and unlike the English herbals from the first half of the century, was small enough to be taken into the field.

This book, a collection of plants from around Europe was printed in 1692-4. Unlike his fellow naturalists who arranged their catalogues alphabetically, Ray instead arranged the entire work using his new classification system, devised in the 1680s (see RCIN 1055263).