Author: Dugdale, William:
Title: The Antiquities of Warwickshire illustrated; from records, leiger-books, manuscripts, charters, evidences, tombes, and armes: beautified with maps, prospects and portraitures.
Description: London: Thomas Warren, 1656. First edition, folio, pp[xvi], 826, [xvi] + all 16 plates including portrait frontispiece by Hollar as called for by Upcott, plus two additional single-page plates opposite p.58 (showing arms of Basil Filding and Elizabeth Aston, and stained glass 'In the parlour window at Newnham'). With all usual;l mispaginations. Title-page in red and black with printer's device printed over with a red diamond shape, woodcut initials and head- and tail-pieces, copious further illustrations of arms, church windows, tombs etc in the text, some of which are full page. Final leaf blank, penultimate leaf errata and Notarum Explicatio. Two plates with pencil annotations noting that they should, according to Upcott, have been bound elsewhere in the book. Map of Knightlow Hundred trimmed too close at top edge with a little loss to title etc but not the map itself, county map of Warwickshire with tiny loss at each lower corner not affecting image, small loss to D1 near gutter affecting a couple of words, occasional very light toning, a few tiny spots of wax but generally very clean within. Later tan calf skilfully rebacked, spine heavily gilt with raised bands and green title label, gilt border and frames with crown cornerpieces, gilt dentelles, edges bright yellow, marbled endpapers. A few tiny white marks to spine, joints and edges a little rubbed, corners of upper board slightly frayed, very good. 19th-century escutcheon-shaped bookplate of Charles Tennant of The Glen to front pastedown, with the motto 'Deus dabit vela'. Sir Charles Clow Tennant, 1st Baronet (1823-1906) was a highly successful Scottish businessman, industrialist and Liberal politician. He purchased The Glen, an estate in Traquair in the Scottish Borders, in 1852. He is connected, via the marriages of his several children, to an extraordinary array of interesting people including Prime Minister Herbert Asquith (his son-in-law), Bright Young Thing Stephen Tennant (his grandson), and actor Helena Bonham-Carter (his great great granddaughter). Dugdale (1605-1686) was born in Warwickshire at Shustoke, near Coleshill. Though he had published (in collaboration with Roger Dodsworth) the first volume of his Monasticon Anglicanum the previous year, Antiquities of Warwickshire was his first complete published work (in fact the figures of monks are from the same plates as Monasticon Anglicanum). The high quality of its scholarship meant that it swiftly became a model for county histories. It notably contains a very early consideration of the significance of stone tools, Dugdale stating that they were 'weapons used by the Britons before the art of making arms of brass or iron was known'. In his chapter on Warwickshire in A Guide to English County Histories, Christopher Day writes: "Rarely has a work dominated a county's historiography to the extent of William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated, published in 1656. Dugdale's achievement was hailed by contemporaries, it inspired or overawed his successors, and it commands respect today" (p.396, 1997 edn..). ESTC R4379; Upcott 1247; Wing D2479

Keywords: Early Printing (to c.1800, all subjects);British & Irish History & Topography


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