Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Towards a History of the Self-Publishing Pose
- 1 “Yit Ful Fayn Wolde I Haue a Messageer | To Recommande Me”: Thomas Hoccleve’s Autograph Books in Fifteenth-Century
- 2 “He Red it ouyr … Sche Sum-tym Helpyng”: Collaborating on the Book of Margery Kempe
- 3 “This Boke I Made with Gret Dolour”: The Pains of Writing in John the Blind Audelay’s Poems and Carols
- 4 “Considering the Grete Subtilite and cauteleux disposition of the said Duc of Orlians”: The Political Valence of Charles d’Orléans’s English Book of Love
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction: Towards a History of the Self-Publishing Pose
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Towards a History of the Self-Publishing Pose
- 1 “Yit Ful Fayn Wolde I Haue a Messageer | To Recommande Me”: Thomas Hoccleve’s Autograph Books in Fifteenth-Century
- 2 “He Red it ouyr … Sche Sum-tym Helpyng”: Collaborating on the Book of Margery Kempe
- 3 “This Boke I Made with Gret Dolour”: The Pains of Writing in John the Blind Audelay’s Poems and Carols
- 4 “Considering the Grete Subtilite and cauteleux disposition of the said Duc of Orlians”: The Political Valence of Charles d’Orléans’s English Book of Love
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
When Edward IV became king of England in 1461, the prominent Austin friar John Capgrave found himself in an unenviable position. Having spent his professional lifetime constructing a network of patrons among the Lancastrian party that had ruled the country since the beginning of the century, he now found himself compelled to cultivate the Yorkist regime. To this end, sometime after Edward's accession but before the author's death in 1464, Capgrave prepared for dispatch to the new king a book containing his Abbreuiacion of Cronicles, a collection of annotations on universal history running from Creation until 1417. This book, now Cambridge, University Library MS Gg. 4. 12, has been identified as a Capgrave autograph, that is, as a manuscript transmitting a text that is written in its author's own hand. In the preface dedicating the Cronicles to Edward, Capgrave explains the rationale behind the layout that he has chosen for his work. He presents the text annalistically in order to clarify its chronological progression and to leave space for subsequent additions:
If ȝe merueyle whi þe ȝeres be set oute as on, too, thre, þis is þe cause: for þe elde bokes in her noumberes, þouȝ þei were mad ful treuly, ȝet be þei viciat be þe writeres; eke þe cronicles of Euseby, Jerom and oþir haue grete dyuersité in noumbiris of ȝeres. This is þe cause whi I sette my noumbiris o-rowe. Also, if ȝe merueile þat in þoo ȝeres fro Adam to þe flood of Noe sumtyme renne a hundred ȝere or more where þe noumbir stant bare and no writing þerin, þis schal be myn excuse: forsoth I coude non fynde, notwithstand þat I soute with grete diligens. If othir studious men þat haue more red þan I, or can fynde þat I fond not, or haue elde bokes whech make more expression of þoo stories þat fel fro þe creacion of Adam onto þe general flod þan I haue, þe velim lith bare saue þe noumbir, redy to receyue þat þei will set in (7/19–32).
[viciat: spoiled]
This preamble and the notes that follow it are primarily designed to facilitate the consultation of the Cronicles: “These reules had in mynde þe reder schal more parfitely vndirstand þis book,” Capgrave concludes (8/6–7).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018