Book Description

Excerpt from Seven Champions of Christendom No Work, perhaps, has been more extensively read, and more generally appreciated, than "The Famous Historie of the Seven Champions of Christendom;" indeed, it is impossible to tell how much this extraordinary production of a comparatively unknown author, may have influenced the early literature of the country. It undoubtedly inspired the poet Spenser, - the first book of whose "Faery Queen" is founded en the first part of the "Champions;" and it is generally believed that Shakspeare was as familiar with this work of Richard Johnson as with those of Plutarch or Chaucer. In the absence of any particulars of his life, we can only gather from the works attributed to him, that Richard Johnson was an author of repute, towards the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Although the "Seven Champions" is the work by which he is best known, he wrote or compiled several volumes of ballads and romances. The first part of the "Seven Champions" was probably published in 1576, and the second part some time before 1580. 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.