Holinshed | The Chronicles, 1586-7, 3 volumes bound in 2, plus further volume of eighteenth-century reprints of cancelled leaves, a quintessential piece of Elizabethan secular scholarship

Raphael Holinshed

The first and second-[Third] volumes of Chronicles, comprising 1. The description and historie of England, 2. The description and historie of Ireland, 3. The description and historie of Scotland: First collected and published by Raphael. Holinshed, William Harrison, and others: Now newlie augmented and continued (with manifold matters of singular note and worthie memorie) to the yeare 1586, by John Hooker alias Vowell Gent, and others. London: John Harrison, George Bishop, Rafe Newberie, Henry Denham, and Thomas Woodcocke, 1586-7.

3 volumes bound in 2, plus further volume of "castrations", folio (370 x 237 mm), gothic type, text in double columns, title-pages within woodcut borders (McKerrow & Ferguson 148, 122 [twice], 147a [twice], 131), woodcut printer's device (McKerrow 211), woodcut initials, head- and tail-pieces, several cancels in second and third volumes, with cancelled leaves excised as usual (see catalogue note), eighteenth-century reprints of cancelled leaves in "castrations" volume, comprising: pp. 421-4, 443-50, 1328-31, 1419-574, uniformly bound in nineteenth-century dark green straight-grained morocco gilt, spines gilt in compartments, marbled edges and endpapers, some leaves browned, joints starting

The second edition of the best known narrative history of the period and a quintessential piece of Elizabethan secular scholarship. Other contributors to this edition include Abraham Fleming, Francis Thynne, and John Stow. Few books give such a strong impression of Elizabethan culture and society as this, with its dedications to major figures such as Burghley, Leicester, and Henry Sidney, and the detailed "description of Britaine" by William Harrison that covers such miscellanous subjects as the English shires and principal towns, beer, and even the defence of the historicity of giants as early inhabitants of Britain. The edition of Holinshed on which Shakespeare based many of his plays, including Richard II, Richard III, Macbeth, Henry IV (parts 1-2), Henry V, Henry VI (parts 1-3), Henry VIII, and Cymbeline. Boswell-Stone's research in the late nineteenth century demonstrated beyond doubt that Shakespeare used this second edition, by comparing the playwright's texts to the Chronicles, and identifying key words and phrases used only in this edition (see W.G. Boswell-Stone and H.R.D. Anders, eds., Shakespeare's Holinshed, 1896, new edition 1907). After Queen Elizabeth I was alerted to this second edition of the Chronicles by the Privy Council she ordered that certain sections which she considered potentially harmful should be removed. The offending passages principally concerned Anglo-Scottish relations, the Babington plot and Leicester's campaign in the Low Countries. On 1 February 1587 the Archbishop of Canterbury was ordered to recall and reform the book. As a result, copies were subsequently issued with numerous cancels in the second and third volumes. Between 1723 and 1728 three reprints of the removed leaves were published by Gyles and Woodman (edited by John Blackburn), Bateman and Cowse and Dr Drake. Later-bound copies often have these reprints instead of the cancelled leaves. 

PROVENANCE:

Sir Lawrence Palk: armorial bookplates

LITERATURE:

USTC 510797; ESTC S122178; STC 13569; Keith I. Maslen, "Three eighteenth-century reprints of the castrated sheets in Holinshed's Chronicles", The Library, Third Series XIII (1958), 120-124