Lot 183: ASCHAM, Roger (1514/15-1568). The Scholemaster or plaine and persite way of teachyng children

ASCHAM, Roger (1514/15-1568). The Scholemaster or plaine and persite way of teachyng children, to understand, write, and speake, the Latin tong. London: John Daye, 1570. [Bound with:] A Report and Discourse... of the affaires and state of Germany. London: John Daye, [c. 1570].

2 works in one volume, 4° (200 x 150mm). Black letter with Roman, italic, and Greek types, typographical title-borders, woodcut initials and ornaments, large pictorial woodcut device at end of first work [McKerrow 128]. (Faint stain damp at head of text, light soiling, a little wear at title edges.) Early vellum, spine lettered in manuscript (soiled, some loss at spine, front endpaper missing, ties lacking). Provenance: 'g.a.' (initials on first title and, possibly in the same early 17th-century hand, transcription on the back free endpaper from Bacon's 'On Learning' in an early 17th-century hand) -- Robert Forby, Caius College, Cambridge, 1787 (inscription on first title) -- James Gunn, Bookseller (ALs dated July 20/93, laid-in) -- Thomas Edward Watson (bookplate; by descent to the present owners).

FIRST EDITIONS, tall copies. The Scholemaster 'is a classic in the history of education as well as a recognized landmark in the progress of English prose composition' (Pforzheimer). 'The expression of this humane spirit... and the lively defence of the vernacular in The Scholemaster -- and perhaps also the touching description of Lady Jane Grey reading the Phaedo while everyone else was out hunting -- have made it famous' (PMM). The Report of the Affaires and States of Germany bound in this volume is based on a diary Ascham kept while secretary to Sir Richard Morison, English ambassador to the Emperor Charles V. He forwarded the greater part of it in a letter dated 1552 to his friend John Astley, in attendance on Princess Elizabeth at Hatfield, from which this 'Report', describing the German princes he met and the political questions at issue in Europe, was eventually published.

Robert Forby (1759-1825), philologist, was a fellow at Caius College, Cambridge, when he acquired this copy in 1787. Later the same year Sir John Berney persuaded him to leave university and become tutor to his sons. Afterwards he took pupils at Barton Bendish. Forby's important philological work, left unfinished, was The vocabulary of East Anglia: an attempt to record the vulgar tongue of the twin sister counties, Norfolk and Suffolk (London: 1830). ESTC 104387 and 100282; Grolier Langland to Wither 4 and 10; Pforzheimer 15 and 14; PMM 90; STC 832 and 830.

ENGLISH LITERATURE BEFORE 1800

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