John Stow's Great Annales of English History
Rival of Grafton and Hollinshed - Contributor to Shakespeare
Edmund Howes' Expanded Edition of 1615
Stow, John. ANNALES, Or, Generall Chronicle of England, Begun by John Stow; Continued And Augmented with matters Forraigne and Domestique, Ancient and Moderne. By Edmund Howes, Gent (London: Thomas Dawson, 1615) First edition to include Howes augmentations and with the appendix with separate title-page. Added to this copy as a frontispiece is the 1792 engraved portrait of Stow published by Smith. Numerous engraved initials, some quite large, and engraved head or tail-pieces throughout. Folio, in later half brown morocco over cloth covered boards, the spine with gilt ruled flat bands and gilt lettering in three compartments. [i], 988, [2], [26] pp. Lacking titlepage and 14 page preface, page 1 and the last two leaves with some restoration of old tears, other general expected signs of age but overall quite solid and sound. Public library ex-libris with engraved bookplate and a small ink stamp on the later free-fly and added frontispiece.
ONE OF THE GREAT WORKS OF ENGLISH HISTORY. A great rival to both Richard Grafton and Raphael Hollinshed, Stow's antiquarian tastes brought him under ecclesiastical suspicion as a person "with many dangerous and superstitious books in his possession," and in 1568 his house was searched. An inventory was taken of certain books he possessed "in defence of papistry," but he was apparently able to satisfy his interrogators of the soundness of his Protestantism. A second attempt to incriminate him in 1570 was also without result. Stow's works, like those of Hollinshed, proved valuable to Shakespeare in the writings of English histories, though the later was preferred by him. Modern scholarship however now concludes Stow's works to be of better historic accuracy and value.
Stow originally printed his great ANNALES beginning from Brute to the year 1580, he continued the work himself up to March 26, 1605. This last lifetime edition being printed within 10 days of his death. Offered here is the first edition to include Edmund Howes amendments continuing the work to include the reign of King James and adding George Buck's history of the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and London, additional appendixes and an index. DNB; Britannica 11th edition; OCLC. |
