The boke of Saint Albans : $b containing treatises on hawking, hunting, and cote armourBerners, Juliana
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The boke of Saint Albans : $b containing treatises on hawking, hunting, and cote armour
Berners, Juliana
Falconry -- Early works to 1800; Heraldry -- Early works to 1800; Hunting -- Early works to 1800
Many bibliophiles, however, of education and taste have been positively
blind when outside the circle of their own particular studies. So it was
with the Rev. Dr. M‘Neille, a well-known critic and book-collector of
sixty years ago. When addressing Dr. Dibdin he wrote thus of “The Book
of St. Albans”—“This book is itself useless, and only a _bon morceau_
for the quizzical collector.” With such feelings towards one of the most
curious works which this country produced during the infancy of the
printing press, it was simply impossible that the interest of its pages
should be revealed to him; and however rich in divinity and _editiones
principes_ of the classics the library of the worthy doctor may have
been, it is evident that our Book of St. Albans could never have been
aught but an alien on _his_ book-shelves.
The works printed by William Caxton were almost without exception in the
English tongue, while the contemporary presses of Oxford, St. Albans,
and Machlinia were nearly all in Latin. Of the eight books at present
known to have been printed at St. Albans, the only two in English were
the “Fructus Temporum” and the work under review. The “Fructus” or St.
Albans’ Chronicle is the same as that printed two years previously by
Caxton, with the addition of certain ecclesiastical events and Papal
chronology, probably added by the printer himself to please the monks.
The Book of St. Albans’ and the St. Albans’ Chronicle make a class of
themselves; but as it is impossible to understand their position without
a glance at the other works from the same press, we will give a
tabulated description of the whole eight.
BOOKS PRINTED AT ST. ALBANS IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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