- 833J Chifflet, Philip (1597-1657) Owner: Hyacinthii Bussa Casalensis
- 835J Donne, John (1573-1631) Owner Cordelia Sandford.
- 477E Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586) Owner Eliza: Sippi …heetory… 1658.
- 650J Tasso, Torquato, (1544–1595) Tr. Edward Fairfax (c. 1580–1635) Owner Susanna Knollys
833J Chifflet, Philip (1597-1657) Owner: Hyacinthii Bussa Casalensis
Sacrosancti et œcumenici concilii Tridentini Paulo III, Iulio III et Pio IV pp. mm. celebrati canones et decreta : quid in hac editione præstitu[m] sit sequens Philippi Chiffletii … præfatio indicabit.
Venedig: Nicolaus Pezzana, 1705. Price $900
Duodecimo 13x 7 cm. Signatures: , A-Q9 Engraved Title page by Isabella Piccinni she was the daughter of the Venetian engraver Giacomo Piccini (d. 1669), who trained her in the art of drawing and engraving in the styles of the great masters, particularly Titian and Peter Paul Rubens. In 1666 she entered the Convent of Santa Croce in Venice and took the name Suor (Sister) Isabella. She continued to work as an engraver, accepting numerous commissions from Venetian publishers to illustrate liturgical books, biographies of saints, and prayer manuals. However, as a Franciscan nun dedicated to a life of poverty, she divided her earnings between her convent and her family living in Venice. Her long and productive career ended with her death at the age of ninety. With two contemporary ownership notes, one ” ad usum J per Hyacinthii Bussa Casalensis and
The Council of Trent (1545-63), was “highly important for its sweeping decrees on self-reform and for its dogmatic definitions that clarified virtually every doctrine contested by the Protestants. Despite internal strife, external dangers, and two lengthy interruptions, the council played a vital role in revitalizing the Roman Catholic Church in many parts of Europe. Pius IV confirmed the council’s decrees in 1564 and published a summary of its doctrinal statements; observance of disciplinary decrees was imposed under sanctions. In short order the catechism of Trent appeared, the missal and breviary were revised, and eventually a revised version of the Bible was published. By the end of the century, many of the abuses that had motivated the Protestant Reformation had disappeared, and the Roman Catholic Church had reclaimed many of its followers in Europe” (Britannica)
2). 835J Donne, John (1573-1631) Owner Cordelia Sandford
Poems, by J.D. VVith elegies on the authors death
London: Printed by M[iles]. F[lesher]. for John Marriot, and are to be sold at his shop in St Dunstans Church-yard in Fleet-street, 1639.
Price: $18,500.
Octavo: 13.5 x 9.1 cm..Signatures: A-Z8, Aa-Dd8. With the engraved frontispiece portrait. THIRD EDITION. (first ed. 1633) This copy is bound in its original binding of sprinkled calf, ruled in blind, with a discreet repair to the front joint and foot of the spine. The text is in fine condition and is complete with the portrait of Donne –now rarely encountered- by William Marshall, apparently after a lost miniature by Hillyard, showing Donne as a rakish young man of eighteen, with long hair and an earring in his right ear. Beneath the portrait is a poem by Izaak Walton.
With the contemporary signature of Cordelia Sandford on the title page and the early signature, “Charles Mackenzie”, on leaf A5.
Please see: SARAH LINDENBAUM‘s Blog on the ownership of this book!
“The poetry of Donne represents a sharp break with that written by his predecessors and most of his contemporaries. Much Elizabethan verse is decorative and flowery in its quality. Its images adorn; its meter is mellifluous. Image harmonizes with image, and line swells almost predictably into line. Donne’s poetry, on the other hand, is written very largely in conceits— concentrated images that involve an element of dramatic contrast, of strain, or of intellectual difficulty. Most of the traditional ‘flowers of rhetoric’ disappear completely. For instance, in his love poetry one never encounters bleeding hearts, cheeks like roses, lips like cherries, teeth like pearls, or Cupid shooting arrows of love. The tears which flow in A Valediction: of Weeping, are different from, and more complex than, the ordinary saline fluid of unhappy lovers; they are ciphers, naughts, symbols of the world’s emptiness without the beloved; or else, suddenly reflecting her image, they are globes, worlds, they contain the sum of things. The poet who plays with conceits not only displays his own ingenuity; he may see into the nature of the world as deeply as the philosopher. Donne’s conceits in particular leap continually in a restless orbit from the personal to the cosmic and back again.
“Donne’s rhythms are colloquial and various. He likes to twist and distort not only ideas, but also metrical patterns and grammar itself. In the satires, which Renaissance writers understood to be ‘harsh’ and ‘crabbed’ as a genre, Donne’s distortions often threaten to choke off the stream of expression entirely. But in the lyrics (both those which are worldly and those which are religious in theme), as in the elegies and sonnets, the verse never fails of a complex and memorable melody. Donne had an unusual gift, rather like that of a modern poet, T.S. Eliot, for striking off phrases that ring in the mind like a silver coin. They are two masters of the colloquial style, removed alike from the dignified, weighty manner of Milton and the sugared sweetness of the Elizabethans.
“Donne and his followers are known to literary history as the ‘metaphysical school’ of poets. Strictly speaking, this is a misnomer; there was no organized group of poets who imitated Donne, and if there had been, they would not have called themselves ‘metaphysical’ poets. That term was invented by Dryden and Dr. Johnson. But the influence of Donne’s poetic style was widely felt, especially by men whose taste was formed before 1660. George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, and Abraham Cowley are only the best known of those on whom Donne’s influence is recognizable. The great change of taste that took place in 1660 threw Donne and the ‘conceited’ style out of fashion; during the 18th and 19th centuries both he and his followers were rarely read and still more rarely appreciated. Finally, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, three new
editions of Donne appeared, of which Sir H.J.C. Grierson’s, published in 1912, was quickly accepted as standard. By clarifying and purifying the often-garbled text, Grierson did a great deal to make Donne’s poetry more available to the modern reader. Almost at once it started to exert an influence on modern poetic practice, the modern poets being hungry for a ‘tough’ style that would free them form the worn-out rhetoric of the late 19th century romanticism. And Donne’s status among the English poets quickly climbed from that of a curiosity to that of an acknowledged master.
“No more than a couple of the poems on which Donne’s modern reputation is built were published during his lifetime, though most of them were widely circulated through court and literary circles in handwritten copies. There were practical reasons for this halfway state of affairs. Many of the poems would have constituted black marks on Donne’s reputation as an earnest and godly divine; and because they were difficult and allusive, only a few people wanted to read them. Thus Donne was known, outside the relatively limited circles that had access to manuscript-collections, primarily as a preacher and devotional writer. But in these capacities he was tremendously productive and influential.” (The Norton Anthology of English Literature, fourth edition).
STC 7047; Keynes 80; Pforzheimer 297
3). 477E Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586) Owner Eliza: Sippi …heetory… 1658.
The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia. Written by Sir Philip Sidney Knight. Now the sixt time published, with some new additions. Also a supplement of a defect in the third part of this history, by Sir W.Alexander Knight. Whereunto is now added a sixth booke..
London : Printed by W[illiam] S[tansby, Humphrey Lownes, and Robert Young] for Simon Waterson, 1627 [i.e. 1628] $3,200
Folio 29 x 19.5 cm. Signatures: π3 A-Z6, Aa-Zz6, Aaa-Fff6. [“A sixth booke, to the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia” by Richard Bellings, originally published separately in 1624, has separate title page with imprint “London, printed by H.L. and R.Y. 1628”; pagination and register are continuous.] This copy is bound in full modern English calfskin in a contemporary style, It has spine label. This copy has the ownership of Eliza: Sippi …heetory… 1658.
This edition contains The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia — Certaine sonnets — The defence of poesie — Astrophel and Stella — Her most excellent maiestie walking in Wansted Garden.
“Sir Philip Sidney was a cultured, courteous, and courageous man – everything a man should be when the term ‘aristocrat’ is applied to him. His work was not published in his lifetime though the manuscripts were circulated, in the fashion of the day, and widely read. Sidney’s appearance in English poetry is sudden, brilliant, and brief.” (page 808 The Cambridge Guide to English Literature.) William Ringler describes Arcadia as “the most important original work of English prose fiction produced before the 18th century.”
“The romance’s complicated plot is full of oracles, disguisings, mistaken identity, melodramatic incidents and tangled love situations. Some episodes are of political interest, and Sidney clearly put more of his serious thought on statecraft into it than he pretends when he describes the book as mere entertainment. The Arcadia also contains many poems – ecologues and songs which are interspersed throughout the narrative; they represent Sidney’s experimental and exploratory ventures into verse.”
“The book […] was by Stephen Gosson; it was an attack upon poets and players from a narrowly Puritan point of view. Sidney did not specifically answer Gosson’s attack, but he must have had it in mind when he composed, at some uncertain date, a major piece of critical prose which was published after his death under the titles ‘The Defense of Poesy’ and ‘An Apology for Poetry’. In this long essay Sidney systematically defends poetry (indeed all imaginative literature) against its attackers. He points out the antiquity of poetry, and its prestige in the ancient world. He establishes its universality. He cites the names given to poets by the Romans (vates or prophet) and the Greeks (poets or maker) to indicate their ancient dignity. But, he says, the real defense of the poet depends not upon what he has been but upon what he does. All arts depend upon works of nature, but the poet, supreme among artists, can make another nature, new and more beautiful.”
“Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella (Starlover and Star) is the first of the great Elizabethan sonnet cycles. These collections, imitative of Petrarch or of his French imitators, were based upon a well-understood convention. The poet undertook to display all the contrary feelings of a lover – hope and despair, tenderness and bitterness, exultation and modesty, by the use of ‘conceits’ or ingenious comparisons. Many of these became traditional, and eventually, stale: the poet who complained that in love he both burned and froze, or that his sighs were the winds driving his ship on a tossing sea, was echoing many an earlier poet. So Sidney protests, in the role of Astrophel, that he uses no standard conventional phrases; his verse is original and comes from the heart. (This pretense is also conventional.) But what gives Sidney’s sonnets their extraordinary vigor and freshness is Sidney’s ability to dramatize. He uses dialogue, is often colloquial, and he heightens the situation as much as he can within the fourteen lines.” (quoted from the Norton Anthology, 479-480)
STC 22547; Sir Philip Sidney (ed. Dennis Kay, 1987), p.299; Lawn, Brian. Catalogus Bibliotheca Lawnianae,; p. 152; ESTC,; S117301;Juel-Jensen, Bent. Books by Sir Philip Sidney,; p. 12; Stump, Donald V. Sir Philip Sidney: An annotated bibliography,; no. 6; W.W. Greg. A bibl. of the Engl. printed drama, v. 3, p. 1128.
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4) 650J Tasso, Torquato, (1544–1595) Tr. Edward Fairfax (c. 1580–1635) Owner Susanna Knollys
Godfrey Of Boulogne: Or The Recovery Of Jerusalem. Done into English heroicall verse, by Edward Fairefax Gent.And now the second time imprinted, and dedicated to His Highnesse: together with the life of the said Godfrey.
London : Printed by [Eliot’s Court Press, for] Iohn Bill, printer to the Kings most Excellent Maiesty, 1624. Price: $ 1,900
Folio; 27.5 x 17 cm. Signatures: ¶⁴ )(⁴ A⁴ B-2K⁶ 2L⁴. (lacking the frontis. portrait (plate) of Godfrey, signed: Guil: Pass: fe., i.e. Willem van de Passe. “Some copies [of this ed.] have an engr. portrait of Godfrey and/or an extra leaf of verses: ‘The genius of Godfrey to Prince Charles’ …”–STC (2nd ed.)) Second Edition, 1st editions was published in 1600. This copy is bound in full modern calf . This has the ownership signature on the dedication page of Susanna Knollys
Tasso’s epic poem in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the Siege of Jerusalem. Said to be a favorite of both King James and Charles I.
The materials for the life of Fairfax are slight, and in some matters contradictory. They are principally comprised in a communication from Mr. Brian Fairfax, a descendant of the poet, to Bishop Atterbury; in a notice by Dodsworth the antiquary, in his manuscript work, ‘ Sancti et Scriptores Ebor.; in a short biographical account by Mrs. Cooper, in her • Muses Library;• which she states to have been furnished to her by Fairfax’s family; and in the Peerages of the times of Elizabeth and James I.
STC (2nd ed.), 23699
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