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Book of the Week — A Discourse upon the Pharisee and the Publicane

09 Monday Oct 2017

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Anglican Church, Bedford, books, Church of England, England, engraved frontispiece, jail, John Bunyan, John Milton, nonconformists, penal laws, pharisee, portrait, publican, The Pilgrim's Progress, tyranny

BT378-P5-B85-1685-Portrait
“See how ye Pharisee in the Temple stands
And justifies himself with lifted hands
Whilst ye poor publican with downcast eyes
Conscious of guilt to God for mercy cries.”

A Discourse upon the Pharisee and the Publicane…
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
London: Printed for Jo. Harris, at the Harrow, over against the Church in the Poultry, 1685
First edition
BT378 P5 B85 1685

John Bunyan was born about a mile from Bedford, England in 1628. He was arrested on November 12, 1660 for preaching without the approval of the Anglican Church. He was jailed for nearly thirteen years. His best known work, The Pilgrim’s Progress, was written while in the Bedford jail. During his lifetime, about one hundred thousand copies of the work were distributed throughout the British Isles and the British American colonies. It has been continuously in print since its first printing. In spite of the popularity of his work, Bunyan was nearly penniless, a traveling tinker like his father before him. While in prison, he made shoelaces to support his family.

Printed one year after the appearance of the authentic second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress and in the same year that the Bedford magistrates ordered penal laws against Nonconformists to be enforced, Bunyan’s Discourse is a critique of the tyranny of the Church of England and of those among his readers who, like the Pharisee in the parable, prided themselves in what he considered superficial religiosity.

John Bunyan wrote during a time of phenomenal political, religious and social upheaval in England. It was also a time of remarkable literary output. Bunyan’s works kept company with those of George Herbert, Thomas Browne, Thomas Hobbes, Richard Allestree, Andrew Marvell, and others.

Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece depicting the Pharisee and the publican in the temple, within a cross-vaulted arcade. Below this is a portrait of Bunyan at age 57.

BT378-P5-B85-1685-DiscourseBT378-P5-B85-1685-Reader

 

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Book of the week – De rerum natura

04 Monday Jan 2016

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afterlife, Alexander Pope, biblical, blind-tooled, blindstamped, body, British, Cambridge, Church of England, classics, Constance, De rerum natura, decoration, engraved, Epicurus, fire, folio, French Revolution, frontispiece, Fulda, Germany, Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Gilbert Wakefield, gilt, gods, government, Greek, Hamilton, Homer, Horace, Jesus College, Londini, Lucretius, mathematics, ministry, morocco, mortal, nature, New Testament, pamphlets, poem, poet, portrait, punishment, rules, scholar, soul, Titus Lucretius Carus, tragedies, Tuscan, Unitarian, vicar, Virgil, Wa, Wakefield, world

PA6482-A2-1796-v.1-portraitPA6482-A2-1796-v.1-titlePA6482-A2-1796-v.1-pg1

DE RERUM NATURA LIBROS SEX, AD EXEMPLARIUM…
Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BCE – ca. 55 BCE)
Londini: Impensis editoris, typis A. Hamilton, 1796-7
PA6482 A2 1796 oversize

De Rerum Natura is the only surviving work of Lucretius. Only one manuscript copy of it is known to exist. This manuscript was found in 1417 in a monastery at Fulda in Germany by Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, a Tuscan secretary to a church general council at Constance.

It is a didactic poem of 7,400 lines in six books, in which the poet expounds on the world view of the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus. The object was to abolish belief that the gods intervened in the world and that the soul could experience punishment in an afterlife. Lucretius demonstrated that the world is, instead, governed by mechanical laws of nature. He described the soul as mortal and posited that it perishes with the body.

This is the first edition of the “Wakefield” edition, the edition by Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801). Wakefield was a biblical scholar. The son of a vicar, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, through a scholarship. He studied mathematics and the classics. Although he took orders, he left the ministry and the Church of England and became a Unitarian. He earned his living as a tutor while writing controversial pamphlets attacking the government. He was imprisoned for two years for the publication of a pamphlet titled, “A Reply to some Parts of the Bishop of Landoff’s Address,” in which he defended the French Revolution. To support himself, he published a translation of the New Testament (1792), companion editions to Horace (1794) and Virgil (1796), an edition with commentary of Greek tragedies (1794), an annotated edition of Alexander Pope’s Homer (1796), and this, his Lucretius. He published his De Rerum Natura at his own expense.

The book established Wakefield as a leading British scholar. The large paper, folio edition was mostly destroyed by a fire in the printing-office in which they were stored.

Engraved portrait of Gilbert Wakefield on frontispiece. Bound in contemporary straight-grained black morocco, panelled covers with broad blind-tooled borders and gilt edges, spine with broad gilt rules and blindstamped decoration. Edition of fifty copies.

 

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Book of the Week – Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World

28 Monday Sep 2015

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Benjamin Motte, Dublin, eighteenth century, English, engraving, Enlightenment, Irish, John Sturt, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Lemuel Gulliver, London, portrait, Robert Steensma, seventeenth century, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Teerlink AA, Teerlink B, The University of Utah, travel, William Sheppard


Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
London: B. Motte, 1726
First edition
PR3724 G7 1726

When Travels by “Lemuel Gulliver” was first published, only a few close friends knew that the real author was Jonathan Swift, the Dean of the Anglican St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Swift, a native Dubliner, was involved in several political controversies during his lifetime, particularly in relation to the treatment of the Irish by the English.

Travels was a none-too-subtle, bitter satire of English royalty, politicians, scientists, and historians. Styled after popular travel and exploration narratives of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the imaginative storytelling lambastes the much-lauded human reason of the Enlightenment. In Travels, Swift suggests that no change in governmental form would ever effect any lasting change in political behavior. Mankind, never noble for long under any circumstances, would always face the same unequivocal self: full of greed, excess, corruption, exploitation, violence, and decadence.

Benjamin Motte, a London printer, received an anonymous letter requesting that “Captain Gulliver’s” memoirs be published. A manuscript, probably copied in a hand other than Swift’s, was delivered, and one short month later, the book went on sale, after the publisher negotiated the softening of several passages. The book’s first printing sold out in a week. The combination of deadpan reporting, exotic experiences, and jaundiced backward glances at English society made the book an immediate success. Thus, the successful publication of a book politically loaded in a time before freedom of the press was but a gleam in a few revolutionary’s eyes.

The frontispiece is a fine example of eighteenth-century English book illustration. The engraved portrait of Swift is by John Sturt and William Sheppard (II?). University of Utah copy (“Teerlink B” edition) gift from Robert Steensma, second University of Utah copy (“Teerlink AA” edition) gift of Anonymous.

alluNeedSingleLine

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Book of the Week – Martin Luther

15 Monday Jun 2015

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Albrecht Dürer, biblical commentary, Christ, copyright, Germany, halo, Hans Bauldung Grien, historiated woodcut, Holy Roman Empire, homilies, Johann Schott, Latin, lions, Martin Luther, Medieval Europe, Otto Brunfel, portrait, Postil, proprietary law, putti, Reformation, Roman Catholic, Roman Catholic Church, sainthood, sermons, stags, Strasbourg, title page, title page border, unicorns, Wittenberg, woodcut border, woodcuts


XIII. PREDIG. NEWLICH…ANNO XXIII. ANHENGIG DEN…
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Strasbourg: Johann Schott, 1523
Second edition
BR332 S3 1523

A copy from one of only two editions of this collection of thirteen sermons by Martin Luther. The collection of sermons was a supplement to “Twenty Seven Sermons” (1523). These two collections, along with “Fourteen Fine Christian Sermons” (1522) were part of one of the most important projects of Luther’s career: the creation of a Postil for the reformed church.

Luther wrote his sermons in a piecemeal fashion. His Postil was printed a few pieces at a time. “Thirteen Sermons” is from the early period of his Postil composition. The early printed sermons represent Luther’s own vision for the Postil. Editorial changes were made by reform Lutheran leaders after his death.

“Postil” was originally a term used in Medieval Europe for biblical commentary, derived from the Latin term “post ill verba textus” (after these words). “Postil” later referred to homiletic exposition as opposed to thematic sermonizing. By the mid-fourteenth century, the term was applied to an annual cycle of homilies.

In early sixteenth century Roman Catholic preaching, especially in Germany, postils were commonly used. Luther began publishing his Postil (that is, his suggested annual series of homilies) in Wittenberg in 1521, as replacements for those used by the Roman Catholic Church.

This edition is illustrated with a historiated woodcut title-page border, thought to be by Hans Bauldung Grien, a student of Albrecht Dürer, which includes printer Schott’s monogram, putti, unicorns, lions, and stags. A full-page portrait of Luther by Grien faces the title-page. A small image of Christ appears on the title-page. The penultimate leaf has a four-part woodcut border, also attributed to Grien. The portrait of Luther is of particular interest.

The original portrait, first published by Schott in 1521, included a halo surrounding Luther’s head (signifying sainthood). The fact that the halo was removed in a second edition printed only two years later suggests the swiftness of Reformation theological departure from Roman Catholic notions of the spiritual power of church leaders.

Printer Johann Schott was famous for using excellent woodcuts by noted artists of the day, including students of Dürer. In 1533, he took another printer to court over the reprinting of one of his illustrated books (Otto Brunfels’s herbal). The case is the first reprint suit documented in the Holy Roman Empire, an example of how the commerce of printing changed notions of proprietary law, i.e. copyright, for the written word and for art; authors and artists; and, of course, publishers.

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Book of the Week – Miscellaneous Poems

06 Wednesday May 2015

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"To His Coy Mistress", Andrew Marvell, Cornhill, English, engraved, frontispiece, Jesuits, London, Mary Marvell, Mary Palmer, Oliver Cromwell, poems, portrait, Robert Boulter, title page, Turks-Head, woodcut


 

“Had we but world enough, and time”

Miscellaneous Poems
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
London: [By Simon Miller?], 1681 for Robert Boulter, at the Turks-Head in Cornhill
First edition

This collection marks the first appearance of the majority of Andrew Marvell’s poems, including “To His Coy Mistress,” one of the most celebrated lyric poems in the English language. The collection was “taken from exact copies, under his own handwriting, found since his death among his other papers, witness my hand this 15th day of October, 1680. Mary Marvell.” So states the “Letter to the Reader.” However, the edition was published under mysterious circumstances.

There is no record that Marvell ever married. Mary Palmer was Marvell’s housekeeper. It is thought that friends of Marvell’s added the erroneous announcement, for reasons still hypothesized today. Some modern-day Marvell scholars accept that Mary Palmer was married to Marvell.

Leaves S1 and X1 are cancels, replacing thirteen leaves, necessitated by the suppression of three long poems in honor of Oliver Cromwell, the publication of which was thought to be impolitic. The suppressed leaves are missing in all but two known copies of the printed folio, these two copies being incomplete. Popular rumor attributed Marvell’s death to poisoning by Jesuits.

Illustrated with engraved frontispiece portrait of Marvell. Woodcut publisher’s device on title-page.

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