Book Description

Excerpt from The Life of Saint of Werburge of Chester The present legend is extant only in an edition by Pynson (London), 1521 (described in Dibdin's Typogr. Antiq. II. 491), of which five copies are known to exist: one (the copy described by Dibdin as Heber's) in the British Museum, two in the Bodleian, one in the Minster library at York, and one in Mr. Christie Miller's collection (cf. Hawkins). It was carefully reprinted (in the type and shape of Pynson's ed., with all its faults, and without punctuation) for the Chetham Society, 1848, by E. Hawkins, with an introduction. Extracts had been given by Dibdin, and, not always correctly, by Warton (Hist. of Engl. Poetry, II. 371 - 380). In Pynson's edition the poem is preceded by a prologue in the honour of St. Werburge by J. T. (whose name neither Herbert nor Hawkins were able to make out). This prologue in an acrostic of the two first stanzas, and in vv. 17, 23, 28, names Henry Bradsha, "sometyme monke in Chester," and servant of St. Werburge, as the author of the English legend. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.