Boke of Saint Albans

INTRODUCTION: SEVERAL independent printing presses were established in England before the close of the fifteenth century; and from them issued numerous books which are invaluable to all students of antiquity from the light they throw upon the social habits and literary progress of our nation. Of these it may safely be said that not one exceeds in interest that work of an unknown typographer, which is here presented in facsimile, and which, from the town in which it was compiled, as well as printed, is known to all bibliographers as "The Book of St. Albans." This work has always been a favourite, partly because our feelings are appealed to in favour of the writer who for centuries has taken rank as England's earliest poetess, and is still, in all our Biographical Dictionaries, reckoned among "noble authors;" and partly because we love mysteries, and a mystery has always enshrouded the nameless printer. The subjects, too, so curiously alliterative — Hawking, Hunting, and Heraldry, have an enticing and antique flavour about them, being just those with which, at that period, every man claiming to be "gentle" was expected to be familiar; while ignorance of their laws and language was to confess himself a "churl." As to the language and orthography of the book, it is a never-failing source of interest, being quite different from any other printed work of the fifteenth century, except the "St. Albans' Chronicle" from the same press. Among bibliographers it ranks as "rarissimus" the known copies being so few that they might probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. v Looking at the book, then, all round, it will be a convenient plan to consider these subjects separately, and to treat the volume in its four aspects of Authorship, Typography and Bibliography, Subject-matter, and Philology.