John Bale’s National Bibliography from the Libraries of the Earls of Chesterfield, Carnarvon, Abbey, and Breslauer
John Bale. Illustrium maioris Britanniae scriptorum, hoc est, Angliae, Cambriae, ac Scotiae Summarium… Ipswich [actually: Wesel, Derick van der Straeten], 1548.
A landmark of bibliographical history and Renaissance bookbinding alike: the rare first edition of the first printed national bibliography of Britain — indeed the first complete national bibliography ever printed — preserved in a superb contemporary Parisian mosaic binding made for Sir Thomas Wotton, the celebrated “English Grolier.” Few books embody so perfectly the intersection of Renaissance humanism, Protestant exile culture, aristocratic collecting, and the early history of bibliography.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
A4 ²4 A–Z4 Aa–Zz4 Aaa–Sss4 = 12 leaves, 255 numbered leaves, 1 blank leaf.
With pale red ruling throughout.
Illustrated with a half-page title woodcut, two smaller woodcuts, one decorative border, and numerous woodcut initials, mostly on black ornamental grounds.
Quarto (204 × 152 mm).
Although the title page gives Ipswich and John Overton as printer, the book was in fact printed in Wesel on the Lower Rhine by Derick van der Straeten. The false imprint was deliberately used to circumvent English import restrictions on Protestant books.
Physical Description & Binding
Contemporary brown calf binding with later rebacking over five raised bands, richly decorated in gilt and black mosaic onlays. The covers feature elaborate interlaced black strapwork framed by gilt fillets and centred with the silver-stamped armorial supralibros of Sir Thomas Wotton. Gilt board edges and gilt edges throughout. Preserved in a brown linen slipcase bearing the gilt arms of John Roland Abbey.
The binding belongs to the celebrated group of Parisian bindings commissioned by Sir Thomas Wotton (1521–1587), the first English collector systematically to assemble a library of gold-tooled bindings in the style of Jean Grolier. Because of these refined continental bindings, Wotton became known to later bibliophiles as “the English Grolier.”
Howard Nixon later demonstrated that Wotton’s bindings were executed by several Parisian workshops during the Edwardian period, likely between 1549 and 1551, after Wotton had travelled extensively on the Continent. The present volume is attributed to Wotton’s so-called “Binder C.”
The First National Bibliography Ever Printed
The author John Bale (1495–1563), former Carmelite friar, Protestant polemicist, and historian, composed the Summarium while in exile after the execution of Thomas Cromwell and the collapse of Protestant reform under Henry VIII.
The work is not merely the first bibliography of British authors, but what bibliographical historians Bernard Breslauer and Roland Folter called “the first complete national bibliography.” Ironically, this foundational monument of British literary identity had to be written and printed abroad while its author lived in exile.
Yet the book simultaneously reveals the profoundly international character of Renaissance humanism. Bale’s structure, divided into centuries and organized through systematic indexing, was closely modelled on Johannes Trithemius’ De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis. Even the physical production of the volume depended upon cross-Channel Protestant printing networks centred in the Rhineland.
The title woodcut itself reflects this political tension: Bale is shown presenting his work to the young Edward VI, anticipating the reformer’s eventual return to England later in 1548. A smaller woodcut portrays the English proto-reformer John Wyclif.
Sir Thomas Wotton and the End of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism
Sir Thomas Wotton lived, like Bale, between England and continental Europe. A Protestant sympathizer with strong intellectual ties to France and the Low Countries, he assembled one of the earliest consciously formed bibliophilic libraries in England, notable for its classical texts, French books, theology, geography, architecture, and humanist scholarship.
The present volume stands at a remarkable historical crossroads. Both Bale and Wotton experienced exile, imprisonment, and political reversal during the violent confessional upheavals of Tudor England. Under Mary I, Wotton himself was imprisoned for his religious beliefs before being rehabilitated under Elizabeth I.
Scholars have noted that after his imprisonment Wotton largely abandoned the elaborate Parisian bindings that had defined his youthful collecting. In this sense, the present book represents not only a masterpiece of Renaissance bibliophily, but also one of the final expressions of the pan-European humanist culture that flourished before the confessional fractures of the later sixteenth century.
Provenance
Armorial supralibros of Sir Thomas Wotton (1521–1587).
By descent through the Earls of Chesterfield to George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon (1866–1923); sold Sotheby’s, London, 8 April 1919, lot 89 (£88).
William E. Moss; Sotheby’s, London, 2 March 1937, lot 69 (£140 to Maggs).
John Roland Abbey (1894–1969), with arms on slipcase and exlibris; Sotheby’s, London, 21–23 June 1965, lot 107 (£580 to H. P. Kraus).
Bibliotheca Bibliographica Breslaueriana; Christie’s, New York, 21 March 2005, lot 7 ($31,200).
Literature
Adams B 134; BM STC German 63; Breslauer, Historic and Artistic Bookbindings from the BBB; Breslauer/Folter no. 15; Hobson, Thirty Bindings, no. 13; Petzholdt 342; VD16 B 224; Foot I, pp. 139ff.; Hobson/Culot no. 38; Needham no. 53.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, lot 84:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume II
