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Bound in 19th c. calf, rebacked, elaborately tooled in blind. A fine, complete copy, with occasional soiling and some inoffensive ink stains. There is a small hole in the blank lower margin of the title page, not affecting the engraving, and a clean tear in the same margin, not affecting the image. There is an intermittent, light, angular damp-stain in the the inner margin. The final contents leaf, supplied, is foxed and a bit stained, its fore-edge irregular. Illustrated with an engraved title page -with roundel map of England and views of London and the Thames- and 67 engravings. This is the variant with the unsigned leaf of poems signed I. Gruterus. The engravings depict: 35 monarchs, peers, and famous commoners (including explorers and poets), Queen Elizabeth s tomb and Prince Henry s hearse, as well as 30 portraits of famous divines. The biographies and portraits include Thomas More, King Henry VIII, Lady Jane Grey, Philip Sydney, Queen Elizabeth I, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (the queen s favorite, ultimately beheaded for insurrection), William Tyndale, and notable navigators, explorers, and privateers: Thomas Cavendish, Sir Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher and John Hawkins, with short descriptions of their voyages (including their voyages to the Americas.) The text was written by the printer-publisher Henry Holland, son of the great Elizabethan translator Philemon Holland (d. 1637). The plates were engraved by the siblings Willem (d. 1642) and Magdalena van de Passe (1600- ca. 1638), with the possible exception of the engraved title page, which might have been the work of their father, Crispin van de Passe I (1564-1637). That Willem and Magdalena were collaborators is proven in the Carmen in Commendationem Libri Auctoris et Sculptorum (p. ix verso). While the book, containing the first series of English portraits ever issued, was conceived and written by Holland, who also supplied the images from which the engravers would make their prints, the printing of the book was a joint venture paid for by Crispijn de Passe (then in Utrecht) and his frequent collaborator, the printer Jan Jansz. in Arnhem. The plates remained in De Passe s inventory until his death in 1637. In his post-preface Holland states that as far as he was able he obtained his portraits from contemporary paintings in oil. If it was objected that many other famous men might have been included in the volume, he excused himself on the grounds that he could not obtain a true likeness. "The Heroologia was a natural sequel to Holland s Baziliologia (a series of royal portraits), which was also a collection of plates of notable personages but without text. In the Heroologia , Holland, who was again the promoter, if not strictly the publisher, planned a regular book with portrait illustrations and lives of those portrayed, written by himself, adding eulogies and, in the case of writers, lists of their works. While referring to illustrious men and women of earlier centuries, he limited his field to the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. In the presentation of his book and the type of the portraits, he took as his model Jacob Vanderheiden s "Praestantium Aliquot Theologorum qui Romanum Antichristum praecipue oppugnarunt Effigies et Elogia"(The Hague: 1602). The inclusion of Thomas More, Statesman: Holland included a portrait and biography of Thomas More, but not among the men of religion. As Holland explains, More could not be included in the section on churchmen because he "drank deep from the Circean cup" of the Church of Rome and was transformed by the draught (just as the witch Circeturned Odysseus' men to swine), putting him in thrall to the pope. However, Holland continues, as a religious controversialist More had no peer, and as a statesman and author he must be honored. Holland includes a list of More's political offices and his works(singling out the Utopia as his greatest), touches on his friendship with Erasmus (perhaps as a.
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