Spring/Summer 2005 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIESJohn Stow (1525–1605)and the Making of theEnglish PastEdited by Ian Gadd and Alexandra GillespieTHE BRITISH LIBRARYThe scholar and antiquarian John Stow(1525–1605) is a figure of crucial importance toour understanding of medieval and early modernEnglish history, literature, and culture. His Surveyof London, a rich account of metropolitan topographyand tradition, is still an invaluable resource forscholars of the early modern city, and his Chroniclesof English history paved the way for the famous historicalprojects of Raphael Holinshed and WilliamCamden, and shaped the historical consciousness ofearly modern dramatists and poets such asShakespeare and Samuel Daniel. We also owe someof the most important copies of major medievaltexts to Stow’s endeavours as an obsessive ‘serchar ofantiquities’ of ‘divinite ... and poetry.’This volume brings together wide-ranging andexciting new essays on Stow. Its contributors considerthe feuds and friendships at the heart of the Tudorhistoriographical project, the construction of a politicaland religious culture, and a topographical history,for Elizabethan London, the early modern inventionof the medieval past, and the manuscript andprinted books written and collected by this industriousand important ‘maker’ of English history.Ian Gadd is a lecturer in the School of English andCreative Studies at Bath Spa University College.Alexandra Gillespie is an assistant professor in theDepartment of English at the University of Torontoat Mississauga.The Life of St Edmund,King and Martyr(facsimile)Introduction by A.S.G. EdwardsTHE BRITISH LIBRARYOn Christmas Eve 1433, the young King Henry VIarrived at the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, one of thelargest religious foundations in fifteenth-centuryEngland. He remained there until Easter and at theend of his stay was admitted to the abbey’s confraternity.To cement the abbey’s relationship with the king,abbot William Curteys conceived the idea of commemoratingHenry’s visit with a ‘life’ of the Anglo-Saxon king, St Edmund, the patron saint of the abbey.The man charged with the task of translatingthe ‘life’ of St Edmund was John Lydgate, a monkat the abbey and the pre-eminent poet of the fifteenthcentury. It is hard to overstate the importanceof the resulting manuscript, both as a monumentto the development of the English language,and for its illustrations – 120 images, forming narrativesequences integrated to form a coherent visualparallel to the text and with a careful fidelity todetail. The completed manuscript that was presentedto the young king remained in his library untilafter his deposition, and although it left royal handsfor a time, it reappears in the inventories of thelibrary of Henry VIII. It was acquired by TheBritish Library in 1742.In both the number and quality of its illustrationsand in the degree of integration, The Life of StEdmund, King and Martyr is unsurpassed.A.S.G. Edwards is a professor in the Department ofEnglish at the University of Victoria.Approx. 190 pp / 6 3 /4 x 9 3 /4 / Available30 illustrationsCloth ISBN 0-7123-4864-6 $60.00 EDISTRIBUTION RIGHTS FOR NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA ONLY.OTHER RIGHTS HELD BY THE BRITISH LIBRARY.Approx. 265 pp / 6 1 /2 x 9 3 /4 / January 2005120 colour illustrationsCloth ISBN 0-7123-4871-9 $100.00 EDISTRIBUTION RIGHTS FOR NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA ONLY.OTHER RIGHTS HELD BY THE BRITISH LIBRARY.33