SIR PHILIP SIDNEY AND THE CIRCULATION OF MANUSCRIPTS, 1558-1640

Reprint. From the library of the Renaissance scholar and current director of The Warburg Institute, William Sherman, with his name in ink to the front free endpaper and a few pencil annotations to the chapter on Sidney's 'Astrophil and Stella'. Original blue cloth lettered and ruled in gilt to the spine. Lacking dustwrapper (as far as we can ascertain, this 2000 reprint was issued without a wrapper). A near fine copy, the cloth and gilt sharp, the contents, except for the annotations noted above, clean throughout. Still available as a very expensive print-on-demand title in laminated boards, copies of this groundbreaking volume in cloth have always been thin on the ground.

Henry Woudhuysen's exhaustively researched volume is divided into two parts, each revelatory in itself and mutually illuminating. Part I, 'The Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558–1640', examines the rich culture of authorial and scribal manuscripts, literary and scholarly, during the period, as well as the production of manuscripts by professional scribes such as Ralph Crane and Richard Robinson. The second part examines Philip Sidney's works in light of the first part's research. Woudhuysen has examined all the manuscript evidence, as well as the early printed editions of Sidney's works (it includes the best account and guide to the bibliographical labyrinth of the 'Arcadia'). He also sheds fresh light on the figures – statesmen, aristocrats, and of course fellow-poets – forming Sidney's wider circle. Appendices describing and indexing the extant manuscript material offer a glimpse of the scale of Woudhuysen's detective work. Altogether, this is one of a handful of truly indispensable volumes on this remarkable period of English Literature. This copy has a particularly a nice association, coming as it does from the library of William Sherman who, with Woudhuysen, may be the leading living scholar of Renaissance manuscript and book history. Sherman's most recent book is a study of the marginal annotations made by early modern readers, so it's pleasing that this volume contains a few of his own pencilled notes.