The Lord God Made Them All was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1981. The book covers the postwar period — roughly the late 1940s and 1950s — when veterinary practice was being transformed by antibiotics, new surgical techniques, and the gradual mechanization of farming. Herriot interweaves the Yorkshire episodes with accounts of two journeys abroad: accompanying livestock shipments by sea to Russia and by air to Turkey.
The travel chapters provide contrast and comedy — Herriot the country vet abroad, seasick on a cattle boat in the Baltic, bewildered by Istanbul — while the Yorkshire chapters document a world beginning to change. Tractors replace horses, antibiotics make infections survivable, and the old ways of farming (horse-drawn ploughs, hand milking, mixed smallholdings) give way to modernization. Herriot records these changes without polemic but with clear nostalgia for what is being lost.
The book maintains Herriot’s characteristic blend of comedy, medical detail, and landscape poetry, though some readers detect a slight mellowing in tone — the young vet’s anxieties have been replaced by the confidence of experience, and the episodes tend toward the warmly comic rather than the farcical.
Collecting The Lord God Made Them All
First edition (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1981): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Signed: $75–$150
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Lord God Made Them All the US or UK edition? This title exists in both. In the UK, it was a standalone volume published in 1981. In the US, it was also published as a standalone but sometimes paired with Every Living Thing. The title comes from the hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” — Herriot used lines from the hymn for most of his titles.
Where does the title come from? “The Lord God made them all” is a line from the hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” by Cecil Frances Alexander (1848). Herriot used different lines from this hymn for nearly all his book titles.