John Heywood | The Spider and the Flie, 1556, the Berland copy, in an attractive nineteenth-century morocco gilt binding

John Heywood

The Spider and the Flie. A Parable of the Spider and the Flie, made by John Heywood. London: Imprinted on Flete Street by Tho[mas] Powell, 1556

FIRST EDITION, 4to (182 x 132 mm), gothic type, title-page within woodcut border, woodcut portrait of author, 98 allegorical woodcuts, many full page; woodcut initials, head- and tail-pieces, nineteenth-century dark red straight-grained morocco gilt, covers gilt- and blind-tooled with large diamonds, alternately filled with a gilt-ruled lattice, or repeatedly blind-stamped; gilt spine and turn-ins, edges gilt and gauffered, title page [A1], full-page woodcut portrait [C4], and final text leaf [2S4] supplied in facsimile, repaired wormhole in leaves 2R4-2S3, some woodcuts slightly shaved at upper margin, spine and lower edges lightly rubbed

FIRST EDITION of this Elizabethan allegorical poem and an exceptional early English woodcut book. The parable, in which Catholics appear as flies and Protestants as spiders, along with butterflies, ants and beetles in attendance, was too esoteric for Heywood's audience and was never reprinted. The work features a beautifully elaborate and no doubt expensive series of highly-detailed woodcuts, some depicting massed armies of insects. "The illustrations and decorations as well as the general typographical excellence make this book outstanding among English works of the time" (Pforzheimer).

John Heywood (c. 1497 - c. 1580) was a devout Catholic, best known for his plays but also his collections of proverbs, in which he first recorded famous epigrams such as "hitteth the naile on the hed." and "Rome was not built in one day." The Spider and the Flie was far from Heywood's first foray into religious polemic; he had already been embroiled in religious controversy when, in 1543, he was imprisoned under Henry VIII for his role in denouncing Archbishop Cranmer as a heretic. Though he then found favour during the reign of Mary I, when Elizabeth ascended to the throne he fled to Louvain, where he died.

PROVENANCE:

Bought from Hamill & Barker, Chicago, 18 February 1971; Abel E. Berland, bookplate

LITERATURE:

Pforzheimer 469; STC 13308