Bibliography
The first edition of this selection was published at London in 1893.
The 1535 edition has 8 unpaged leaves (title, table, prologue, and Book I.), 338 numbered leaves, and printer’s mark of Lucretia. The following errors in pagination are noted: 181 for 189, 197 for 187, 201 for 200, 203 for 201, 211 for 209.
The chief point of interest in the Bibliography is the question raised by Wynkyn de Worde’s positive statement in his edition in his epilogue:
And also of your charyte call to remembraunce
The soule of William Caxton first prynter of this boke
In latin tonge at Coleyn hymself to avaunce
That every well disposyd man may theron loke
And John Tate the yonger Joy mote he broke
Which late hathe in Englond doo make this paper thynne
That now in our Englyssh this boke is prynted Inne.
Mr. Gordon Duff is disposed to think that Caxton may have worked on the undated Cologne edition (H.C. *2498), which must in that case be put before 1476, finding a link between his Bruges type and the Cologne presses in a work printed at Louvain in 1475 which contains type of both descriptions.
Most of these editions are in the British Museum. The copy of the Berthelet edition there has an autograph of Shakespeare in it—one of the Ireland forgeries.