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2 vols. 4to. lxxxvii, [1], 301, [1]; [iv], 363, [1] pp. Vol. I: hand-colored frontispiece portrait of King Henry VI engraved by Thomas Cook after an original drawing taken between 1460-1470 in the possession of Fenn, additional hand-colored plate showing 5 badges of the House of Lancaster, 2 folding genealogical tables (constituting the top and bottom halves of the Paston family tree), Vol. II: hand-colored frontispiece portrait of Charles and Margaret of Burgundy engraved by Thomas Cook after a stained glass window in the Dominican Church at St. Omer's, 16 numbered plates depicting signatures and paper marks of various monarchs (bound in reverse order). Modern quarter paper over original brown boards, printed spine labels; extremities of original board worn. new spine in excellent condition. Theological Institute of Connecticut blind-stamps to first and last few pages. Very good. Second edition, complete in two volumes, of Fenn's famous "Paston Letters"ΓΆΒ Β"an edited collection of the papers and correspondence of the Paston family and their associates "describing the life and political scheming of the gentry in Medieval England" (Wikip.). Fenn ultimately published 2 additional volumes in 1789, and was working on a fifth at the time of his death which eventually was published in 1823. / "The Paston Letters are a collection of correspondence between members of the Paston family of Norfolk gentry and others connected with them in England between the years 1422 and 1509. The collection also includes state papers and other important documents." "The large collection of letters and papers was acquired in 1735 from the executors of the estate of William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth, the last in the Paston line, by the antiquary Francis Blomefield. On Blomefield's death in 1752 they came into the possession of Thomas Martin of Palgrave, Suffolk. On his death in 1771 some letters passed into the hands of John Ives, while many others were purchased by John Worth, a chemist at Diss, whose executors sold them in 1774 to Sir John Fenn of East Dereham. The BBC said in 2019 that the letters should have been destroyed because of the subversive views that some of them espouse." [Wikip.] / "In 1787 a little-known Norfolk antiquary named John Fenn caused a literary sensation when he began to issue a series of volumes entitled, in the manner of the time, Original Letters, Written during the Reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV. and Richard III. by Various Persons of Rank or Consequence, and ever since then the numerous surviving private letters of the fifteenth century have been one of the most widely read and cited varieties of Middle English prose. Fenn's Original Letters soon became popularly and then generally known as The Paston letters, after the Norfolk family amongst whom most of them originated, and it was under this title that they were reissued in successively augmented editions by James Gairdner between 1872-75 and 1904" (Beadle, p. 291). REFERENCES: Beadle, Richard, "Private Letters," A Companion to Middle English Prose, Suffolk, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2004, 291-306 pp. FULL TITLE: Original Letters, Written during the Reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Richard III. by various Persons of Rank or Consequence; Containing Many curious Anecdotes, relative to that turbulent and bloody, but hitherto dark, Period of our History; and Elucidating, not only Public Matters of State, but likewise the Private Manners of the Age: Digested in Chronological Order; with Notes, Historical and Explanatory; and Authenticated by Engravings of Autographs, Fac Similes, Paper-marks, and Seals.
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