Details
BALE, John (1495-1563). lllustrium Maioris Britanniae Scriptorum. Wesel: Theodorus Plataenus, 1548 [but colophon reads Ipswich: John Overton, 1548].
4° (197 x 152mm). Without the final blank. Title-page with woodcut illustration, woodcut portrait of John Wicliffe, 2 vignettes and initials. (Title soiled and with fore-margin strengthened, marginal dampstain, some small marginal losses some of these repaired, small hole in I4.) Late 17th-century sprinkled calf, spine in compartments centred with gilt tools, gilt morocco label, edges sprinkled red, upper cover centred with Sutherland arms in blind (spine head repaired, extremities rubbed). Provenance: William Murray (early title signature, occasional marginalia) -- John Leveson-Gower, Earl Gower (1694-1754; bookplate) -- George Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Duke of Sutherland (1758-1833; binding) -- A.H. Bright (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST PRINTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BRITISH AUTHORS. The Sutherland copy. Bale undertoook his antiquarian project to preserve and catalogue the manuscript holdings of those libraries threatened by the dissolution of the monasteries. He often remarked that 'to destroye all without consyderacyon, is and wyll be unto Englande for ever, a moste horryble infamy amonge the grave senyours of other nacyons' (Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 1984, p.327). Bale's Scriptorum was distributed from Ipswich for its English readers, and from Wesel for its continental audience. STC 1296 (see also STC 1295 for a variant imprint).
4° (197 x 152mm). Without the final blank. Title-page with woodcut illustration, woodcut portrait of John Wicliffe, 2 vignettes and initials. (Title soiled and with fore-margin strengthened, marginal dampstain, some small marginal losses some of these repaired, small hole in I4.) Late 17th-century sprinkled calf, spine in compartments centred with gilt tools, gilt morocco label, edges sprinkled red, upper cover centred with Sutherland arms in blind (spine head repaired, extremities rubbed). Provenance: William Murray (early title signature, occasional marginalia) -- John Leveson-Gower, Earl Gower (1694-1754; bookplate) -- George Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Duke of Sutherland (1758-1833; binding) -- A.H. Bright (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST PRINTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BRITISH AUTHORS. The Sutherland copy. Bale undertoook his antiquarian project to preserve and catalogue the manuscript holdings of those libraries threatened by the dissolution of the monasteries. He often remarked that 'to destroye all without consyderacyon, is and wyll be unto Englande for ever, a moste horryble infamy amonge the grave senyours of other nacyons' (Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 1984, p.327). Bale's Scriptorum was distributed from Ipswich for its English readers, and from Wesel for its continental audience. STC 1296 (see also STC 1295 for a variant imprint).
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