Lot 384
Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Printed Books, Maps and Manuscripts
Auction: 11 July 2006 at 12:00 BST
Description
Vita et processus Sancti Thome Cantuariensis martyris super libertate ecclesiasticae. Paris: J. Philippi, 27 March 1495, first edition, 4to, 116 leaves, Gothic letter, double column, woodcut colophon at end, seventeenth-century calf gilt stamped ''Edward Gwynn'' on upper cover and ''E.G.'' on lower cover, repairs to extreme lower corner of aa5 to end affecting a few letters of bb8 and cc1, lower third of colophon leaf (cc2) renewed not affecting colophon woodcut, new endpapers, rebacked
Footnote
Footnote:First edition of the first printed life of Thomas a Becket, written about 1199 by Henry, Abbot of Croyland, Lincolnshire, who used the writings of four close contemporaries of Becket. This copy is from the library of the seventeenth-century book collector Edward Gwynn with his gilt-stamp on covers and with the signature of P. Tyrwhitt on the title. This is possibly Sir Philip Tyrwhitt (1598-1667) of Stainfield, Lincolnshire. Tantalisingly little is known about Gwynn (d.1649), a lawyer who lived in chambers in the Inns of Court for twenty years with Alexander Chorley to whom he bequeathed his considerable library. Gwynn's copies of the early Shakespeare works, known as the Pavier quartos and bound in a single volume, were sold to Folger around 1919 and are now in the Folger Shakespeare library, along with another eighteen volumes from Gwynn's library with his name gilt-stamped on the upper covers. The stamping appears to have been done one letter at a time, no two letterings being identical. W.A.Jackson (Records of a Bibliographer (Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press, 1967, p.115-119) believed Gwynn's library to have been broken up in the 1670's or 1680's but a recent Maggs catalogue posited an earlier date, citing the ownership inscription of Roger Twysden, 1652, in a Gwynn volume. Sir Philip Tyrwhitt's dates coincide neatly with Gwynn's but so far there is nothing to connect the two men. Goff T159; cf. Brunet V, 1319; Hain 15510