[ENGLISH INCUNABULUM] - photo 1
[ENGLISH INCUNABULUM] - photo 2
[ENGLISH INCUNABULUM] - photo 3
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[ENGLISH INCUNABULUM]

Lot 137
10.07.2024 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 52 920
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1249877
Lot 137 | [ENGLISH INCUNABULUM]
Estimate value
£ 15 000 – 20 000
[ENGLISH INCUNABULUM]
Abbreviamentum statutorum. [London]: Richard Pynson, 9 October 1499.
A rare English incunable from the library of Prime Minister William Gladstone, preserved in a contemporary English blindstamped binding for Richard Pynson, with binder’s waste from an unrecorded Pynson broadside. We are unable to trace any copy at auction since 1981.

Published in two parallel editions (according to BMC), both dated 9 October 1499, Pynson’s abridgement of the statutes expands upon the 1481 publication of the same title by Lettou and Machlinia, which is regarded as the first printed English legal book. Created as a handbook for lawyers, it arranges summaries of English statutes alphabetically under subject headings, most of which are given in Law French and a few in Latin, and includes reference to Magna Carta 9 years before Pynson would publish the charter’s full Latin text. Unusually, owing to a legal complaint against the publisher brought by the three lawyers who commissioned the work, it is recorded that 409 copies (of one of the parallel editions) were printed, of which 144 were delivered bound and 265 bound and clasped. Just nine examples of this edition are now recorded in institutional holdings.

The present copy is preserved in an identical binding to that in the BNF, featuring panels belonging to the workshop of the publisher Richard Pynson. Oldham identifies four examples (not including this volume) of books stamped with the same two panels, on editions dating between 1498 and 1508. The rear endleaves constitute a fragment of an unrecorded broadside relating to the capture of English mariner John Woresley and his crew by the French, and their subsequent imprisonment at Boulogne. It is similar in style to a Pynson broadside calling for charity to a victim of fire (STC 7769.2) dated 1520. GW 5; BMC XI 294; Goff A-5; ISTC ia00005000; Plomer, H.R. ‘Two Lawsuits of Richard Pynson’. In: The Library. New Series, No. 38, vol. X. April, 1909.

Chancery octavo (140 x 100mm). 188 leaves (of 196, lacking the 8-leaf ‘Tabula’). Woodcut initials, printer’s device on colophon (first and last quires slightly loose, occasional spotting, some faint staining mostly to lower margin). Contemporary English blindstamped calf for Richard Pynson, the upper panel (Oldham ST. 18) depicting St John the Baptist, the lower ‘Emperor’ panel (Oldham MISC. 4) signed R.P., binder’s waste at rear from an unrecorded Pynson broadside (head of spine chipped, extremities and lower panel lightly rubbed, faint scratch to upper panel, remains of clasp, half of broadside fragment used as rear pastedown detached). Provenance: a few early ink annotations and pen trials – William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister (1809-1898; Hawarden Castle library label) – by descent to the present owner.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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10.07.2024 – 10.07.2024
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