Author: WEEVER, John
Title: Ancient Funerall Monuments Within the United Monarchie of Great Britaine, Ireland, and the Islands Adjacent, with the Dissolved Monasteries Therein Contained; Their Founders, and What Eminent Persons Have Beene in the Same Interred. As Also the Death and Buriall of Certaine of the Bloud Royall; the Nobilitie and Gentrie of These Kingdomes Entombed in Forraine Nations...
Description: London, Thomas Harper, 1631. Hardcover. 4to. Quarter black calf with raised bands and gilt spine lettering/rules and burgundy calf boards. 871pp. Engraved title page, engravings (several full page). Good plus overall. Binding moderately edgeworn (more so at rounded corners) and rubbed, though hinges are tight and sound, with text block lightly age toned per usual; engraved frontispiece portrait provided in old facsimile, as is leaf 863-64; lacks 14-page index. First edition of the first book-length treatment of English church monuments and epitaphs, a bit rough about the edges but decent and quite handleable -- with all woodblock engravings present and delightful. English poet and antiquary Weever (1576-1632) is best known for this title and also for his 1599 "Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut, and Newest Fashion," which contains one of the earliest known poems about Shakespeare, along with others about Ben Johnson, Edmund Spenser and many lesser-known figures from Shakespeare's world. Front flyleaf bears the 1842 ownership signature of Convers Francis (1795-1863), a Unitarian minister from Massachusetts and Transcendentalist who authored several theology titles; below this, he notes, "This rare, curious, & valuable old work is always marked very high on the London Catalogues; -- on Leslie's Catalogue for 1846 it is marked £2.10s. C.F." Interestingly, the 1842 year of Francis's ownership signature is the same year he left his position as pastor of First Parish Church of Watertown, Massachusetts (where he had been since 1819) and joined his alma mater's Harvard School of Divinity as Parkman Professor of Pulpit Eloquence, a post he held until his death. He gifted Harvard his large personal library -- and sure enough the front pastedown bears the engraved bookplate "From the Library of Lowell House Harvard University" (with "Released" inkstamp at bottom). Front pastedown also bears the 1929 bookplate of Frank H. Mason of Brookline, who also pens a note about this copy on the front flyleaf. STC 25223. .

Keywords: Religion


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