Today I offer five books printed in English. Printed before 1700. Each with interesting declared printers, two printed in France. One printed by two Widows. In the 17th century, false imprints, or misleading attribution of publication to a specific printer, were a common practice. This was done for various reasons, including avoiding censorship, gaining a larger market, or even to deceive readers. In other cases we can see Printing and publishing business moving to the widows of the male founders. Each of these five books are examples of these practices.
I) Printed by John Gain 1687 {Wing 2065/637J} II) Printed for Marcy Browning 1681 {Wing H283f /559J} III) Printed at S. Omers by Thomas Gevbelis 1667 {Wing R1892/ 515J] IV) Printed At Paris [i.e. Saint-Omer : English College Press] 1632 {STC.20492/812G} V) Printed by S.I. [Susan Islip] & M.H. [Mary Hearne or Heron] 1648 [Wing B1565A/530J]
I
A philosophical treatise … writ in America1687
“–Franck’s book is now regarded as the first work of philosophy written in North America, though it is a confusing, unfocused text complicated by grossly ornamental language—”
Approaching this book, like any other will certainly lead to confusion , as a Connoisseur of Chaos, I thought I would be ready a voyage into American euphuistic literature. Or at least Euphuistic literature written in America.
So as I often say here we begin “”A sharp sore hath a short cure” (Euphues)”” Lets see if I can find something like that in this book. “thus Paul by Faith fought with beasts at Ephesus and Philanthropus with monsters in the desarts of America (page 34)
637J. Richard Franck , (1624-1708)
A philosophical treatise of the original and production of things writ in America in a time of solitudes by R. Franck.
London: Printed by John Gain and are to be sold by S. Tidmarsh at the King’s Head in Cornhill: and S. Smith at the Prince’s Arms in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1687. Price $4,700
(But arguments have been made—most lucidly by Worthington Ford that it might be Boston. or Cambridge)
Octavo 16.5 x 10.5 cm. Signatures: A-M⁸ N². This copy is bound in modern quarter calf. As for the imprint. Arguments have been made—most lucidly by Worthington Ford—that the book might have been printed in Boston, by none other than Benjamin Harris, who, having been recently liberated from gaol, may have “borrowed” John Gain’s identity as a safe, obscure, respectable unbrella under which to resume publishing. Ford, writing in The Boston Book Market 1679-1700, examines the history of the publication of The New England Primer, and not incidentally considers Franck’s book:
“Who was this “Master John Gaine” who thus holds the first claim to the title New England Primer? He must have been a member of the Stationers’ Company, for he is styled “master,” and presumably was a bookseller but without a known place of business. His name does not appear in the Term Catalogues, and it occurs in the Stationers’ Registers so infrequently as to suggest an unenterprising publisher. […] In 1687 he issued R. Franck’s Phylosophical Treatise of the originall and Produccon of things. Writ in America in a Time of Solitude. On the titlepage of that work [Gain] is a printer. With this second venture pertaining to America [Gain] disappears. […] In 1683 Benjamin Harris had been out of prison a year or more, and his situation would lead him to print over his own name as an advertisement of his reentry into the field. […] Later, when safe in New England, it may be imagined that Harris may have seen the possibilities attached to such a title, and deliberately made Gaine’s still-born proposition his own—an early instance of a pirate publisher on American soil.”
During the late 1680s colonial printers often closely mirrored London imprints, and visual evidence suggests that A Philosophical Treatise could indeed be a Boston printing, especially the layout of the title page. But more rigorous typographic examination must be performed to support this assertion. Richard Franck, for his part, probably returned to England in the early 1690s, but at some point, may have journeyed back to America. Cotton Mather, in his diaries, remarks:
“There is an old Man in the Town, who was a Souldier in the Army of my admirable Cromwel, and actually present in the Battel of Dunbar; he is now come to eighty-eight; an honest Man, and in great Penury. I must releeve him and look after him.” The circumstances of this “old Man” are consonant with Richard Franck’s life. Could he have lived out his days in Boston, in the care and society of Cotton Mather? In any case, a most unusual Americanum, well worth renewed study and consideration as a possible colonial imprint.
As for the text of Franck, Franck, was a captain in Cromwell’s army during the Battle of Dunbar and other Scots campaigns, lived for a few years in America in the 1680s, during which time he composed his Philosophical Treatise, a strange, euphuistic meditation on God, Mosaic Creation, and the wonders of nature—especially fish and fishing. “Franck’s book is now regarded as the first work of philosophy written in North America, though it is a confusing, unfocused text complicated by grossly ornamental language—”the vaporings of a disordered mind,” Charles E. Goodspeed said in his 1943 monograph on Franck. Goodspeed regards Franck as an enigma, and though he researched him deeply, Goodspeed was unable to pinpoint the exact years Franck was in the Colonies, or even where he lived. The most compelling passage relating to America occurs on p. 75, where the Franck asserts:
“The Americans can tell you that Trees grew naturally where the Native Indians never had a being; and were it not for Europes agriculture, and industry; her florid Fields, and flourishing Pasture, would soon feel the fatal stroke of disorder; so become Forrests, and barren Desarts, fit only for bestial and savage inhabitants.”
On p. 34 Franck implies that he actually battled with Native Americans. And on page 112, Franck, an avocational angler (who is better known for his piscatory Northern Memoirs, published at London in 1694), refers to a fish called the American snite, a term on which the OED seems to have missed.
It is also quite rare, this is the only copy I have seen. The last copy I have traced, aside from this one, in an American auction since a copy brought $260 in 1921, though a handful have appeared in England.
Wing F2065; ESTC R20723; Sabin 25467; Alden-Landis 687/65; Barrett, Wendell, ed., Cotton Mather, the Puritan Priest, New York: Dodd; Mead, 1891, p. 244; Ford, Worthington Chauncey, The Boston Book Market, 1679-1700, Boston: Club of Odd Volumes, 1917, pp. 29-33; Goodspeed, Charles E., “Richard Franck,” Bookmen’s Holiday: Notes and Studies Written and Gathered in Tribute to Harry Miller Lydenberg, New York: NYPL, pp. 151-187.
II
559J. John Halfpenny. (fl 1670)
The gentleman’s jockey, and approved farrier, instructing in the natures, causes, and cures of all diseases incident to horses, with an exact and easie method of breeding, buying, dieting, and otherwise ordering all sorts of horses, as well for common and ordinary use, as the heats and course. With divers other curiosities collected by the long practice, experience and pains of J.H. Esquire, Matthew Hodson, Mr. Holled, Mr. Willis, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Holden, Thomas Empson, Mr. Roper, Mr. Medcalf, and Nathaniel Shaw.
London: Printed for Marcy Browning, near the Royal Exchange, 1681. (the only book printed by Marcy Browning in the ESTC). $1,900
Octavo, 15 x 8.5 cm. Signatures: A-S6 T3 Aa3 Most probably missing frontice plate.(Final quire signed T3, A3 with A3 comprising index, possibly meant to be bound as part of the preliminaries) Seventh edition, most likely a pirated edition, Quite Rare Bound in full contemporary sheep, professional restored, a very good copy.
Halfpenny, seems to authored only this one book. In this useful handbook as the title promises, explains ,method of running, breeding, buying, dieting, and medicating, curing horses. Extremely practical there are 279 “Approved Receipts”. I find the section (chapter?) on How to order, feed, and keep any Horse for Pleasure, Hunting or Travel, particularly interesting for example.
“Nor would I have you to distract your mind with any doubt or amazement, because I prescribe you five severe times of feeding in one day, as if it should either overcharge you, or over feed your Horse….”p63
“All editions are rare. There are several variants of the 7th edition also published in 1681. Oddly the UCLA copy on EEBO, which is also dated 1681, has a very similar but clearly different plate from the usual one and may be a pirated version (printed by Marcy Browning, and claiming to be the 7th edition), however this same plate appears in the 9th edition as well. Henry Twyford did not produce his 7th edition until 1683 and used the same plate as in this 1681 printing. His last printing was in 1687, the 8th edition. Pagination error: 267 given as ‘297’.” Niall Kenny TA&MU
Wing H283F list UCLA see above.
London: Printed for Marcy Browning, near the Royal Exchange, 1681. (the only book printed by Marcy Browning in the ESTC) . The British Library has a 1681 edition but printed London : printed for H. Twyford, O. Blagrave, R. Harford, and are to be sold by William Rogers1681. I suspect this is a fictious imprint , and I cant tell if it ever had the plate found in most editions.
There are several variants of the 7th edition also published in 1681. Oddly the UCLA copy on EEBO, which is also dated 1681, has a very similar but clearly different plate from the usual one and may be a pirated version (printed by Marcy Browning, and claiming to be the 7th edition).. I made these conclusions when I could get the ESTC.
III
The Roman Martyrs for Dec 21- Omnes sancti Mártyres, oráte pro nobis.
ROMAN MARTYROLOGY
515J. Catholic Church (Jesuits)
The Roman martyrologe set forth by the command of Pope Gregory XIII. and revievved by the authority of Vrban VIII. Translated out of Latin into English, by G.K. of the Society of Iesus. The second edition, in which are added diuers saints, put in to the calender, since the former impression.
Printed at S. Omers : by Thomas Geubels, 1667. $2,600
Octavo: Signatures ±¹⁰ A-Z⁸ 2A⁴. Device of the Society of Jesus on title page. At foot of title: With licence, and at foot of 2A4v: “Jmprimatur J.C. De Longeual.” translated out of Latin into English by G.K. of the Society of Iesvs. , George Keynes1 (1630-1659.) Bound in contemporary calf with wear, particularly to spine, with loss to leather, bumped and with areas of the hinge split, endpaper hinges split, pages toned, with penciled notation to free end paper, light foxing, end flyleaf separated at tale gutter edge, and hole to last page.
This English version of the Roman Catholic martyrology, or calendar of Saints, The second edition, enlarged, of a recusant work first published in 1627, also in Saint-Omer. The translation of both the original and this second edition is generally attributed to George Keynes, a Jesuit, but almost certainly not the George Keynes (1628-1658), son of Edward Keynes of Compton Pauncefoot, referred to as a possible translator in ONDB.
Backer-Sommervogel,; Vol.IV, Col. 1023, No. 1; Gillow IV:30; Clancy, Thomas. English Catholic Books 1641-1700. Chicago, p. 55.; Wing; K392 Wing (CD-Rom, 1996); ESTC No. R35414. Grub Street ID 117824.
On St Omer’s Press
“The St Omers Press was described by Bishop Jacques Blaise of Saint-Omer shortly after it was instituted in 1608 as ‘a little house equipped with a printing press and all the accessories of printing, and very handsome too.’ Catholic books were illegal in England in the 17th and 18th centuries, and so the press operated as a secret imprint, smuggling unbound books across the Channel into England and Wales. It was a perilous and costly activity, requiring fees to agents and underground distributors in Europe and England, and hefty payments to those ship captains prepared to take the risk of carrying illegal printed texts. In the reign of James VI & I the fine for ownership or purchase of a single book in England was forty shillings.” [https://stomerspress.org/history/]
“During the first half of the 17th century the College press, under the direction of John Wilson, SJ, was the most important source of the proscribed Catholic literature that nourished the piety and loyalty of English recusants. In 1635 the number of scholars rose to 200, but in 1651 the English Civil War reduced enrollment to 110. It hovered around that figure throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The fortunes of the College, moreover, reflected the tribulations of the English Catholic body in the homeland. St. Omers consequently suffered hardships during the oates plot and the bitter repressions following the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745.
Although the College was originally destined for the education of the laity as well as of future priests, the latter were generally in the majority. By the middle of the 17th century more than half of the new English province of the Society of Jesus were alumni of St. Omers. Among the earliest were Bl. Thomas garnet (d. 1608), the college’s protomartyr, and Andrew white, the apostle of Maryland. St. Omers was also an important source of recruits for the seminaries of the secular clergy in Rome and Spain. ” [https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/st-omer-college]
IV
812G Serre, M. de (Jean-Puget), [1600-1665] Translator’s dedication signed: H.H., i.e. Henry Hawkins.
The sweete thoughts of death and eternity
(bound with)
Thoughts of Eternity.
Paris [i.e. Saint-Omer : Printed by the English College Press], 1632 SOLD
Octavo 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches π1 ã4 A-X8 Y4 . {The imprint is false; actual place of publication and identification of printer from STC} “Thoughts of eternity” has separate dated letterpress title page and pagination; register is continuous. First and only edition. This copy is bound in its original limp vellum binding, soiled and rumpled. the spine can be exposed to reveal manuscript lining (see below) This copy has two female ownership signatures one of Hannah White Sunderland and a later signature of Hannah Stakae (?)
HAWKINS, HENRY (1571?–1646), jesuit, born in London in 1571 or 1575, was second son of Sir Thomas Hawkins, knt., of Nash Court, Kent, by Anne, daughter and heiress of Cyriac Pettit, of Boughton-under-the-Blean, Kent. John Hawkins [q. v.] and Sir Thomas Hawkins [q. v.] were his brothers. After studying classics in the college of the English Jesuits at St. Omer, he entered the English College at Rome, under the assumed name of Brooke, on 19 March 1608–9. He received minor orders in 1613, was ordained priest about the same time, and, after spending two years in the study of scholastic theology, left for Belgium and entered the Society of Jesus about 1615. A manuscript ‘status’ of the English College at Rome for 1613 says that he was the ‘son of a cavalier, lord of a castle, a man of mature age, intelligent in affairs of government, very learned in the English laws, and that he had left a wife, office, and many other commodities and expectations, to become a priest in the seminaries.’ Hawkins on coming to England was captured and imprisoned. In 1618 he was sent into perpetual exile with eleven other Jesuits, but, like most of his companions, soon returned to this country, where he laboured, principally in the London district, for twenty-five years. He is named among the ‘veterani missionarii’ in the list of Jesuits found among the papers seized in 1628 at the residence of the society in Clerkenwell. In his old age he withdrew to the house of the English tertian fathers at Ghent, where he died on 18 Aug. 1646.
STC 20492.; ESTC (RLIN),; S115335; de Backer-Sommervogel,; Vol. Col. , No. ;
STC (2nd ed.), 20492Copies – N.America: Folger Shakespeare, Huntington Library, University of Texas.
V
Early Modern True Crime and terror 1648 The theatre of Gods judgements
530J. Thomas Beard, -1632.
The theatre of Gods judgements: wherein is represented the admirable justice of God against all notorious sinners, great and small, specially [sic] against the most eminent persons in the world, whose exorbitant power had broke through the barres of divine and humane law. Collected out of sacred, ecclesiasticall, and pagan histories by two most reverend doctors in divinity, Thomas Beard of Huntington, and Tho. Taylor, the famous late preacher of Mary Aldermanbury in London. The incomparable use of this book for ministers and others is largely expressed in the preface.
London: printed by S.I. [i.e. Susan Islip] & M.H. [i.e. Mary Hearne] and are to be sold by Richard Whitaker at the signe of the Kings Armes in St Pauls Churchyard,* MDCXLVIII. [1648]. $5,000
Folio 25 ½ x 20 cm. Signatures (4) 1-444 Second Part: (2) 1-111 (1) This is A reissue of the same year (Wing B1565B; ESTC R226560) which has an imprint reading in part: Printed by Susan Islip, (Susan Islip was the widow of the printer, Adam Islip, and she worked possibly in Smithfield from 1641 until 1661.) and are to be sold by Mary Heron. A variant Includes a reissue of Wing T570 (ESTC R23737), with the original title page: The second part of the theatre of Gods iudgments. … by … Dr Thomas Taylor, … London printed by Richard Herne. An. Dom. 1642. There is very imperfect internet copy from the defectivein: Bodleian Library./.”/ Imperfect: p. 39-40, 107-108 of 2nd pt., all after p. 110 of 2nd pt. lacking. “Best copy available for photographing. “ ?
This copy has a wonderful pedigree, Graham Pollard, Arthuri B Evans and Sebastian Evans, with ownership inscriptions to front free end paper, along with penciled notations. This copy is bound in full contemporary calf recently expertly rebacked.
Beard’s work is an adaptation and partial translation of Jean Chassanion’s ’Histoires memorables des grans et merveilleux jugemens et punitions de Dieu’ Beard, as most biographical notes begin “is best known as Chromwell’s teacher, as an ardent Puritan”, that makes sense to a degree, yet I will argue that it is this book, The theater of Gods Judgment has as much influence, and is due more respect. This book is a Puritan Hammer, exhibiting all the forms of ‘Fire and brimstone” which the Puritan God imposed upon those who digressed from the righteous way. Perhaps the narrative of Kit Marlowe’s death, which has now been extrapolated and adjectivally escalated to mythic proportions of social commentary is now the most discussed. Yet Beard’s attack on the theater is not as specific as it might have been, he seems most concerned with Tertullian?. Aside from this ‘though Beard does bring up quite a many examples of the social forces at play in the theater..’ This is a wonderful book. Possibly based on Chassanion’s Histoires memorables des grans et merveilleux jugemens et punitions de Dieu. Cf. ESTC.
Copies in N.America
NYPL & SMU only!
See also
‘The Theatre of Gods Judgements’: Sudden Deaths and Providential Punishments in:
.Providence in Early Modern England
Alexandra Walsham Print publication date: 2001
Print ISBN-13: 9780198208877 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208877.001.0001
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