Abstract
This note examines the fragments of the English Palmerin d'Oliva discovered in the library of Christ Church, Oxford, in 2017. First, it briefly discusses the course the Castilian Palmerín de Olivia followed on the Continent until it crossed to England, where Anthony Munday's translation appeared in 1588. After explaining how the fragments were located, their placement, nature and contents are described. The text in the Christ Church fragments is collated with the other editions of the English Palmerin d'Oliva. The ESTC conjecturally states that the newly discovered edition was printed c. 1600 by Thomas Creede and Bernard Alsop. This article, however, argues that the available textual, typographical and bibliographical evidence suggests that this edition must have been printed c. 1609 by Creede, without the participation of Alsop. Finally, note is taken of the presence on the pages of the handwriting of Henry Aldrich, the seventeenth-century dean of Christ Church.
The castilian Book of CHivALry titled Palmerín de Olivia was printed for the first time in Salamanca in 1511.1 This work narrating the life of its eponymous hero appeared in the wake of the successful publication of Amadís de Gaula,2 and soon its fame crossed the Pyrenees. First, it circulated in Italy, where two editions of the Spanish original were printed in Venice in 1526 and 1534,3 soon to be followed by an Italian translation published in 1544.4 Next, this work was rendered into French by Jean Maugin and made available to readers in an edition first printed in Paris in 1546.5 Maugin's version was the primary source used by Anthony Munday to prepare his English translation, printed for the first time by John Charlewood for William Wright in 1588.6 Unlike all other European versions, the English Palmerin d'Oliva was printed in two parts, as two separate volumes that could each sell for half the price, thus adapting this literary product to the English book market, where customers below the level of the elite might be more inclined to buy it if it were made affordable to them. The two parts of Munday's Palmerin d'Oliva were reprinted in 1597,7 1615/16,8 and in 1637 for the last time.9 Such premature interruption of Palmerin d'Oliva's printed circulation in England may be in part due, as I have suggested elsewhere, to the severe judgement of the curate in Cervantes's Don Quixote, where he states, ‘let [Palmerin d'] Oliua be presently rent in pieces, and burned in such sort, that euen the very ashes thereof may not be found'.10
Apropos of the edition of Palmerin d'Oliva, part I, printed by Thomas Creede in 1615, STC and ESTC provide different information. According to STC, the first issue of the 1615 edition is extant only in the copy held at the library of Lambeth Palace,11 whereas ESTC refers to the existence of a different copy in the library of Christ Church, Oxford.12 In 2012 I contacted Dr Cristina Neagu, Keeper of Special Collections at Christ Church, and inquired about the copy of Palmerin d'Oliva purportedly held in their library. I received an email from her confirming that ‘according to the ESTC, we were thought to possess a fragment of one leaf’, but no record of such a fragment existed. Still, Dr Neagu did not abandon the hope that one day it would be located: ‘We may well have it in a binding and will someday be rediscovered'.13
I recently embarked on a research project dealing with the circulation of the Iberian chivalric romances in English translation and asked my research assistant, Mrs Elizabeth R. Ward, to help me compile a list of all existing copies of editions of Iberian books of chivalry in English translation printed before 1700. In 2017 she made contact with Christ Church and requested information about the copy of the 1615 edition that, according to ESTC, is preserved there. David Stump, antiquarian cataloguer at Christ Church, informed her by personal communication that fragments from the copy in question had been located and, much to our surprise, he also explained that they belonged to an edition different to the one printed by Creede in 1615. Before the end of 2017 this information was conveyed to ESTC staff and is now included in their database.14 The present note briefly describes the fragments of Palmerin d'Oliva in the special collections at Christ Church, now shelfmarked P.163*, identifies the textual sections contained therein, and establishes their relation to the other extant editions of Munday's translation. This detailed examination should enable us conjecturally to ascertain the printer—or printers—who produced this edition and to establish an approximate date of publication too.
The fragments recently discovered comprise not one leaf, as the ESTC informed Dr Neagu (see n. 13), but two leaves, which are fragmentarily preserved as endleaves in a copy of volume II of Cicero's Orationes, printed by Richard Field in London in 1618 and now held in the same library (shelfmarked P.i63).15 The variously sized fragments contain between two and thirteen lines of text printed on both sides, although the paper has been cropped at the margins and some letters have been lost as a result (see Fig. 1). The sections of text preserved belong to parts of chapters 2, 5 and 6 of Palmerin d'Oliva, part I, and correspond to the conjugate leaves 1 and 8 of this edition's signature B. When we visually compare the textual presentation of these fragments with the corresponding sections of the other Palmerin editions, it becomes apparent that the Christ Church fragments are markedly different from the 1588 and 1597 editions. The 1615 edition, however, printed by Thomas Creede in partnership with Bernard Alsop, presents the following typographical similarities with the Christ Church copy: running-titles are printed in capital letters;16 chapter titles are printed in roman with italic for typographical contrast and are preceded by a paraph; black letter is preferred for the body of the text, with roman for contrast (see Fig. 2). In addition, there is perfect line-by-line textual correspondence between the two editions. Hence, it seems safe to conclude that one edition served as copy-text for the other.
ESTC no. S506036, sig. B8v. Christ Church, Oxford, P.163*. © The Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford.
STC 19159a, part I, sig. B8v. British Library C.56.d.8. © The British Library Board.
In order to determine which edition preceded the other, I have collated the text of the Christ Church fragments (hereafter designated CC) and the editions of Palmerin d'Oliva printed in 1588 (designated 1), 1597 (2), and 1615 (3). Below I list all substantive variants existing among these four editions in the textual sections contained in CC, and mention some relevant variations in the accidentals too. Since CC and 3 present identical line-byline setting of text, I locate all variants with reference to the signatures and line numbers in 3. The lemmatic reading is that of 1, while the stemma identifies the variant readings in the three other editions:
Bir, lines 10—11: discerned.] discouered) 2; discouered, 3, CC
Bir, line 11: But] and 2, 3, CC
Biv, line 16: ought be] ought to be 2, 3, CC
Biv, line 17: that is it I] that is it that I 3, CC
B8r, line 4: went] wente 2, CC; got 3
B8r, line 16: that] which 3
B8r, line 25: my Ladie] any Ladie 3
B8r, line 26: thereof] therefore 2, 3, CC
B8r, line 33: verie] very 2, CC; om. 3
B8r, line 35: past] ouer-past 3
B8v, line 28: by] om. 3, CC
From this collation the following conclusions can be drawn:
(1) neither 3 nor CC used 1 as copy-text, since every time 2 departs from the editio princeps, it determines or influences the readings of later editions (e.g. Brr, lines 11, 16; B8r, line 26);
(2) CC does not derive genetically from 3, since every time that 3 has unique readings, CC agrees with 2, not with 3 (e.g. B8r, lines 4, 16, 25, 33, 35);
(3) instead, 3 derives genetically from CC, since every time CC departs from 2, CC and 3 agree, i.e. CC determines the reading in 3 (e.g. Brr, lines 10—11; Brv, line 17; B8v, line 28);
(4) therefore, the textual evidence suggests that CC must derive from 2.17
With the bibliographical evidence available to him in 1925, Gerald R. Hayes established that 3 descended from 2.18 The discovery of the Christ Church fragments sheds new light on the textual derivation of these two editions, confirming that 3 descended from 2 although not directly, but via CC. Unfortunately there is no fragment corresponding to Palmerin d'Oliva, part II, that could have helped us elucidate this part's more complex textual transmission: we know that part II of 3 derives from 1, not 2, but it is not clear whether compositors used an intermediate version (CC?) or not.19
According to ESTC, the Christ Church fragments were printed c. 1600 by Creede and Alsop. As I will show, the conjectural attribution and date suggested by ESTC are not without problems and, in fact, need to be corrected. On 9 August 1596 Thomas Creede obtained a licence to print the two parts of Palmerin d'Oliva,20 which he did publish in 1597. Creede officially owned this licence until 4 December 1615, when it passed to Richard Heggenbotham,21 who financed the 1615/16 edition printed by Creede and Alsop. Consequently, if between 1596 and 1615 Creede owned the right to print Palmerin d'Oliva, it seems reasonable that the edition represented by the Christ Church fragments—from which the 1615 edition is derived—also came off Creede's printing press. The typographic proximity between CC and 3 further substantiates this hypothesis.22
If it is probable that CC was printed at some point between 1596 and 1615, we need to determine when it seems most likely that Creede considered it convenient to issue a new edition of Palmerin d'Oliva. Only when the entire print run of the 1597 edition of Palmerin d'Oliva was sold out would Creede choose to reprint the same work. Notwithstanding the relative commercial success the Iberian books of chivalry attained in Elizabethan England,23 it seems improbable that a new edition of Munday's Palmerin was called for within three years’ time, as ESTC suggests. A later date seems more plausible. When Creede, on 9 August 1596, was granted a licence to print Palmerin d'Oliva, he also registered Palmerin of England, another Iberian romance belonging to the Palmerin cycle.24 Before the end of 1596 Creede put on the market parts I and II of Palmerin of England,25 and in the following months did the same with Palmerin d'Oliva. Interestingly, these two romances were again printed back to back in 1615 and 1616, but in reversed order, first Palmerin d'Oliva and next Palmerin of England.26 It may be surmised that Creede's publication of Palmerin d'Oliva went hand in hand with his editions of Palmerin of England.
Significantly, in 1609 Creede printed another edition of Palmerin of England,27 copies of which have survived but of part I alone. Since Creede tended to associate the publication of the two Palmerin romances, it would follow that he might have printed another edition of Palmerin d'Oliva immediately after or before his 1609 edition of Palmerin of England. The Christ Church fragments, therefore, could represent the only existing remnants of the edition of Palmerin d'Oliva printed by Creede c. 1609. The extant evidence suggests a pattern of variable but parallel periodicity in the publication of the two main Palmerin romances. The publication of the cycle was inaugurated with Palmerin of England, which was printed in the following years: c.1581-85,28 1596, 1609, 1616 and 1639.29 The next title from the Palmerin cycle to appear in print was Palmerin d'Oliva, published in 1588 (x), 1597 (2), c. 1609 (CC), 1615-16 (3), and 1637.30
Dating the Christ Church fragments to c. 1609, moreover, is consistent with Creede's commercial activities, since the years 1607-8 and 1610 saw a marked decline in his overall output.31 Creede's reduced level of productivity perhaps explains that the interval between the publication of 2 and CC was of twelve years, as opposed to nine years between 1 and 2, and six between CC and 3.32 While all extant evidence proves beyond any doubt that Creede was involved in the printing of the Christ Church fragments, can we be so sure that Bernard Alsop— as ESTC indicates—collaborated in the production of this edition? Alsop's printing career began at the end of 1615, precisely with his partial publication of Palmerin d'Oliva for Creede, and hence he could not have been involved as a printer in printing an edition that was certainly produced before 1615.33 In addition, as Creede was used to working on his own,34 it seems safe to consider him the sole printer of the edition of c. 1609. To conclude, the fragments in Christ Church, Oxford, shelfmarked P.163*, correspond to the conjugate signatures Bi and B8 of a copy of the edition of Palmerin d'Oliva, part I, printed by Thomas Creede in London c. 1609. From a textual point of view, this edition is descended from the one Creede printed in 1597 and served as copy-text for the 1615 edition, produced by Creede in association with Alsop.
The Christ Church fragments contain another piece of evidence that has some historical interest, namely, what appears to be Henry Aldrich's handwriting practice (Fig. 3). In 1660 Aldrich became ‘a pleasant, sociable Dean of Christ Church’, as his biographer describes him.35 It is unlikely that Aldrich practised his handwriting using a book from the college library, but would have done so on a book from his personal collection, which was partly based on the library built up by Christopher Hatton, 1st Baron Hatton, that he received around 1670.36 On Aldrich's death in 1710, his personal library comprised some 3,000 books and pamphlets, which he bequeathed to Christ Church, including his copy of volume II of Cicero's were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667 (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1907), pp. 3—4. Actually, printers’ dictionaries date the beginning of his career to 1616, but the first printing job we can associate him with was the 1615 edition of Palmerin ; cf. Sánchez-Martí, ‘Publication of Munday's Palmerin’, p. 201 n. 42. Note that Alsop was made free of the Stationers’ Company on 7 February 1610; see Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers, 111, 683.
ESTC no. S506036, sig. B8r. Christ Church, Oxford, P.163*. © The Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford.
Orationes, where the conjugate signatures B1 and B8 of Palmerin d'Oliva, part I, are used as endleaves.37
Footnotes
1 For a description of this edition, see F. J. Norton, A Descriptive Catalogue of Printing in Spain and Portugal 1501—1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), no. 496. For a critical edition, see El libro del famoso e muy esforçado cavallero Palmerím de Olivia, ed. by Giuseppe di Stefano, in Studi sul Palmerín de Olivia, 3 vols, Istituto di Letteratura Spagnola e Ispano-Americana 11—13 (Pisa: Università di Pisa, 1966), i. For a still useful overview of the genre of the Iberian books of chivalry, see Henry Thomas, Spanish and Portuguese Romances of Chivalry: The Revival of the Romance of Chivalry in the Spanish Peninsula, and its Extension and Influence Abroad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), esp. pp. 84—118.
2 The earliest extant edition of Amadís de Gaula, books I–IV, was printed in Saragossa in 1508, and its continuation, book V, in Seville in 1510; for bibliographical descriptions, see Norton, Catalogue, nos 625 and 788, respectively. It seems likely that a previous edition of books I–IV was printed in Seville in 1496, for which see Rafael Ramos, ‘Para la fecha del Amadís de Gaula: “Esta sancta guerra que contra los infieles començada tienen”’, Boletín de la Real Academia Española, 74 (1994), 503–21.
3 For bibliographical descriptions, see Encarnación García Dini, ‘Per una bibliografia dei romanzi di cavalleria: Edizioni del ciclo dei “Palmerines”’, in Studi sul Palmerín de Olivia, iii, 5–44 (pp. 10–14). 4 For a description, see Alberto Tinto, Annali tipografici dei Tramezzino (Florence: Olschki, 1968), no. 51. The Italian translation was prepared by Mambrino Roseo da Fabriano; for biographical information, see Anna Bognolo, ‘Mambrino Roseo da Fabriano: vita provvisoria di uno scrittore’, in Repertorio delle continuazioni italiane ai romanzi cavallereschi spagnoli: Ciclo di ‘Amadis di Gaula’, ed. by Anna Bognolo, Giovanni Cara and Stefano Neri (Rome: Bulzoni, 2013), 25–75. See also Anna Bognolo, ‘Los palmerines italianos: una primera aproximación’, in Palmerín y sus libros: D?? años, ed. by Aurelio González & others (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2013), pp. 255–84.
5See French Vernacular Books: Books Published in the French Language before1601, ed. by Andrew Pettegree, Malcolm Walsby & Alexander Wilkinson, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2007), ii, nos 40395–7. For a dis cus sion of the French Palmerín d'Olive, see Alan Freer, ‘Palmerín de Olivia in Francia’, in Studi sul Palmerín de Olivia, iii, 177–237; and Anna Bettoni, ‘Il Palmerín de Olivia tradotto da Maugin: editori, storie e mode letterarie nella Francia del Cinquecento’, in “Il n'est nul si beau passe temps Que se jouer à sa Pensee”. Studi di filologia e letteratura francese in onore di Anna Maria Finoli (Pisa: ETS, 1995), pp. 173–201. For the printed circulation of the entire Palmerín cycle across early-modern Europe, see Stefano Neri, ‘Cuadro de la difusión europea del ciclo palmeriniano (siglos xvi–xvii)’, in Palmerín y sus libros, pp. 285–313.
6 STC 19157. For the publication of this work in English, see Jordi Sánchez-Martí, ‘The Publication History of Anthony Munday's Palmerin d'Oliva’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 89 (2014), 190–207. For biographical information on John Charlewood, see H. R. Tedder's article, rev. Robert Faber, in ODNB; for Wright, see R. B. McKerrow, A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books 1557–1640 (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1910), pp. 303–304. Although Munday translated from the French version, he also consulted a copy of the Italian translation; see Giuseppe Galigani, ‘La versione inglese del Palmerín de Olivia’, in Studi sul Palmerín de Olivia, iii, 239–88 (pp. 252–54). For a literary discussion of the Palmerin cycle and its influence upon English literary culture, see Mary Patchell, The ‘Palmerin’ Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, 166 (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1947). For Munday's literary career, see Donna B. Hamilton, Anthony Munday and the Catholics,1560–1633(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); and Celeste Turner, Anthony Munday: An Elizabethan Man of Letters, University of California Publications in English, 2, no. 1 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1928).
7 STC 19158.
8 STC 19159 and 19159a. STC 19159a represents a different issue of STC 19159, with a cancel title page of part I dated 1616; for facsimile reproductions of the cancellandum and the cancellans, see Sánchez-Martí, ‘Publication of Munday's Palmerin’, figs 2—3 (pp. 198, 200). I will refer to this as the 1615 edition, because part I was indeed printed before the end of 1615, even if a different issue was published with the date 1616; part II was printed in 1616.
9 STC 19160. For a bibliographical description, see Jordi Sánchez-Marrí, ‘The University of Alicante Copy of Palmerin d'Oliva (London, 1637): A Bibliographical Description’, Sederi: Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, 23 (2013), 123—37.
10 ‘Publication of Munday's Palmerin’, p. 205. The quotation is from Thomas Shelton's translation of Don Quixote (London, 1612; STC 4915), p. 41.
11 Shelfmark aRc K73.3B P18; in STC it is listed as the Sion College library.
12 ESTC no. S927. Accessed 21 October 2018.
13 Email message to author, 14 December 2012. Cf. Sánchez-Martí, ‘Publication of Munday's Palmerin’, p. 199 n. 40.
14 ESTC no. S506036.
15 STC 5310.5. Richard Field was active as a printer in London between 1579 and 1624; see McKerrow, Dictionary of Printers, pp. 102—103.
16 According to ESTC, the ‘running title [in the Christ Church fragments] resembles that found in STC 19159 and 19159a’; see n. 8 above.
17 According to ESTC, CC presents ‘a nearly identical setting of text to STC 19158 [i.e. 2]’.
18 Hayes, ‘Anthony Munday's Romances of Chivalry’, The Library, iv, 6 (1925), 57—81 (p. 75); cf. Sánchez-Martí, ‘Publication of Munday's Palmerin’, pp. 201—202.
19 See Hayes, ‘Munday's Romances of Chivalry’, p. 76; and Sánchez-Martí, ‘Publication of Munday's Palmerin’, pp. 202—204.
20 A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London; 1554—1640 A.D., ed. by Edward Arber, 5 vols (London: privately printed, 1875—77; repr. New York, NY: Peter Smith, 1950), iii (1876), 68. For information about Creede, see Akihiro Yamada, Thomas Creede: Printer to Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Tokyo: Meisei University Press, 1994); and David L. Gants's article in ODNB.
21 A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers, iii, 579. For information on Heggenbotham, see McKerrow, Dictionary of Printers, p. 136.
22 See pp. 228—29 above. The typographical similarity possibly explains why ESTC was initially misled into thinking that CC was a copy of the 1615 edition; see p. 227 above. Note that the typographical proximity would exist only for signatures A—F, since the rest of the 1615 edition of part I was printed using a differnt fount of type, probably belonging to Alsop; cf. Sánchez-Marrí, ‘Publication of Munday's Palmerin’, pp. 200—201 and fig. 4 (p. 203).
23 See my chapter ‘The Publication of Chivalric Romances in England, 1570—1603’, in Iberian Chivalric Books in English Translation: Anthony Munday and Early Modern English Culture, ed. By Leticia Álvarez-Recio (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming).
24 See n. 20 above. For information on this romance, see William Edward Purser, Palmerin of England: Some Remarks on this Romance and on the Controversy concerning its Authorship (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1904).
25 STC 19161. For the reprinting of the Palmerin romances in 1596—7, see Louise Wilson, ‘Playful Paratexts: The Front Matter of Anthony Munday's Iberian Romance Translations’, in Renaissance Paratexts, ed. by Helen Smith & Louise Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 121—32 (pp. 126—27).
26 STC 19163.
27 STC 19162.
28 On 13 February 1581 Charlewood obtained a licence to print Palmerin of England; see Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers, 11 (1875), 388. While the earliest extant copy of Palmerin of England is from the 1596 edition, there is a reference to ‘Palmeryng [sic], 2 parts’ in a list of books, dated 1585, sold by the London bookseller and printer Thomas Marshe. Since Palmerin d'Oliva was not published until 1588, this record in Marshe's list can only refer to Palmerin of England, parts I and II; see Henry R. Plomer, ‘Some Elizabethan Book Sales’, The Library, 111, 7 (1916), 318—29 (p. 328).
29 STC 19164.
30 Notice that although x bears the year 1588 on the title page, it was published on New Year's Day and, hence, the edition must have been prepared towards the end of 1587.
31 See Yamada, Thomas Creede, p. 8.
32 This reduction to six years is certainly attributable to his shared printing with Alsop and the financial involvement of the bookseller Heggenbotham.
33 For information on Alsop, see Henry R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers who
34 Throughout his entire career as a printer Creede shared the production of only nine per cent of the editions he printed; see Yamada, Thomas Creede, p. 45.
35 W. G. Hiscock, Henry Aldrich of Christ Church, (Oxford: Christ Church, i960), p. 1. See also Stuart Handley's article in ODNB; and E. F. A. Suttle, ‘Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church’, Oxoniensia, 5 (1940), 115—39.
36 Handley in ODNB. See also Victor Stater's article on Christopher Hatton in ODNB.
37 See Hiscock, Henry Aldrich, p. 4; and Handley in ODNB.
Research for this note was funded in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ref. FFI2015—70101—P), whose support is hereby gratefully acknowledged.
