HEYWOOD, John (ca 1497-ca 1578). The Spider and the Flie. A Parable of the Spider and the Flie, made by John Heywood. London: Tho[mas] Powell, 1556. 4 o (182 x 132 mm). Woodcut title border, woodcut portrait of author, 98 allegorical woodcuts, many full-page (see below), woodcut capitals, head- and tail pieces. (Imperfect: title-page, portrait [C4] and final leaf [S4] supplied in facsimile, a few small marginal tears repaired, a number of the large woodcuts cropped at top and fore-margin.) 19th-century dark red straight-grained morocco gilt, covers tooled in gilt and blind in an arrangement of large diamonds, these alternately filled with a lattice of gilt rules, or repeated blind impressions of a small lozenge stamp, gilt spine, edges gilt and gauffered, gilt turn-ins. Provenance : purchased from Hamill & Barker, Chicago, 18 February 1971. FIRST EDITION of one of the most curious allegorical poems of the Elizabethan period and an exceptional early English woodcut book. The elaborate parable, in which the Catholics are represented as flies and the Protestants as spiders, with butterflies, ants and beetles in attendance, proved too abstruse for most of Heywood's audience and the book, with its elaborate and no doubt expensive series of highly detailed woodcuts, some depicting massed armies of insects, was never reprinted. Heywood himself had been embroiled in religious controversy. Imprisoned under Henry VIII in 1543 for denouncing Archbishop Cranmer as a heretic, he found favor during the reign of Mary I, but when Elizabeth ascended to the throne, he fled to Louvain, where he died. Pforzheimer 469 ("the illustrations and decorations as well as the general typographical excellence make this book outstanding among English work of the time"); STC 13308. VERY RARE. Only the Houghton copy has appeared at auction in the last quarter century (in the Houghton sale in 1979 and again in 1995, both Christie's, London).
HEYWOOD, John (ca 1497-ca 1578). The Spider and the Flie. A Parable of the Spider and the Flie, made by John Heywood. London: Tho[mas] Powell, 1556. 4 o (182 x 132 mm). Woodcut title border, woodcut portrait of author, 98 allegorical woodcuts, many full-page (see below), woodcut capitals, head- and tail pieces. (Imperfect: title-page, portrait [C4] and final leaf [S4] supplied in facsimile, a few small marginal tears repaired, a number of the large woodcuts cropped at top and fore-margin.) 19th-century dark red straight-grained morocco gilt, covers tooled in gilt and blind in an arrangement of large diamonds, these alternately filled with a lattice of gilt rules, or repeated blind impressions of a small lozenge stamp, gilt spine, edges gilt and gauffered, gilt turn-ins. Provenance : purchased from Hamill & Barker, Chicago, 18 February 1971. FIRST EDITION of one of the most curious allegorical poems of the Elizabethan period and an exceptional early English woodcut book. The elaborate parable, in which the Catholics are represented as flies and the Protestants as spiders, with butterflies, ants and beetles in attendance, proved too abstruse for most of Heywood's audience and the book, with its elaborate and no doubt expensive series of highly detailed woodcuts, some depicting massed armies of insects, was never reprinted. Heywood himself had been embroiled in religious controversy. Imprisoned under Henry VIII in 1543 for denouncing Archbishop Cranmer as a heretic, he found favor during the reign of Mary I, but when Elizabeth ascended to the throne, he fled to Louvain, where he died. Pforzheimer 469 ("the illustrations and decorations as well as the general typographical excellence make this book outstanding among English work of the time"); STC 13308. VERY RARE. Only the Houghton copy has appeared at auction in the last quarter century (in the Houghton sale in 1979 and again in 1995, both Christie's, London).
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