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1697 first Milbourne edition, printed for Abel Roper at the Black Boy, and Roger Clavel at the Peacock in Fleetstreet (London), 8vo, 4 3/4 x 7 1/2 inches tall period-style full leather bound, five raised bands to spine, red speckled page edges, illustrated with an engraved frontispiece plate, xvi, 328 pp. [References: Wing T945; W.A. Copinger, No. 12]. Moderate soiling, rubbing and edgewear to covers, with bumping to all four tips, a bit of bowing to both board, and a 1 1/2-inch crack to the top of the rear joint. Small instance of worming to the last six leaves (and rear endpapers) of the volume, with a small bit of interference with a couple of letters of text on the final page. Minor staining along the gutter between the title page and frontispiece. Top corner of the blank front free-endpaper trimmed off. Otherwise, a very good copy - clean, bright and unmarked. ~SP01~ [1.5P] A scarce, early English translation and poetic paraphrase of Thomas à Kempis's monumentally influential 15th-century devotional masterpiece, 'De Imitatione Christi' (The Imitation of Christ). Translated by Luke Milbourne, a Presbyter of the Church of England, this edition represents a distinct literary adaptation formatted into verse and structured prose. The title page bears the classic Wing-era imprint identifying the famous bookmaking stalls of Abel Roper at the Black Boy in Fleet Street. An essential cornerstone work for collections focusing on antiquarian theology, English printing history, and 17th-century devotional literature. Like so many early English translations, this edition was heavily edited to suit Milbourne's theology, in his words, treading 'with all the tenderness I could between Extreams of Popish Superstition, and Phanatic Indecency and Slovenliness.' Milbourne, for example, deleted all of a Kempis' 17th chapter of Book 1, because he found the author's monkish philosophy too severe. By stark contrast, several years before this version, the great French dramatist Pierre Corneille had retired from writing plays and produced a critically-acclaimed metrical version of the Imitation which was quite close to the original. This Milbourne translation is featured prominently in the 1900 bibliography by W.A. Copinger, On the English Translations of the 'Imitatio Christi,' including a long set of excerpts. 'How vast a contrast to the French metrical version of Corneille! The Poet himself terms his work a Paraphrase, 'sometimes close to the text, sometimes more libertine as the matter would allow.' The Imitation of Christ was first written (or at a minimum, transcribed) by Catholic monk Thomas a Kempis (circa 1380-1471), as four separate books completed between 1420 and 1427, at Mount Saint Agnes monastery, in the town of Windesheim, located in what is now the Netherlands. He wrote these works for the instruction of novices of his Augustinian monastic order, followers of Geert Groote's Brethren of the Common Life. But the writings quickly became popular among all the literate faithful. They were copied together in one manuscript as early as 1427, by Kempis, and copied (and later printed) together fairly consistently thereafter. Soon after hand-copied versions of the Imitatio Christi initially appeared, the printing press was invented, and it was among the first books after the Bible to be printed. There is probably no other book other than the Bible which has been printed in so many editions and translations.
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