Lot 14
  • 14

[Ascham, Roger]

Estimate
30,000 - 40,000 USD
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Description

  • [Toxophilus, the Schole of Shooting Conteyned in Two Bookes]. London: Edward Whitchurch, 1545
  • ink, paper
4to (7 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.; 191 x 140 mm). First leaf bearing the woodcut arms of Henry VIII flanked by two banderolles and mounted upon a cartouche with 7 lines of verse, text chiefly in black letter, metalcut initials; first leaf rather soiled and starting along lower inside margin, marginal staining, foxing and some browning throughout. Nineteenth-century calf, paneled in gilt and blind, central lozenge tooled in blind with crossed arrows, repeated in gilt on the spine, gilt fan-shaped cornerpieces, marbled endpapers, edges gilt.

Provenance

Bertram Ashburnham, 5th Earl of Ashburnham (sale, Sotheby's, 25 June 1897, lot 165) — H. Gallice (bookplate) — Marcel Jeanson (bookplate and sale, Sotheby's Monte Carlo, 28 February 1987, lot 43). acquisition: Purchased at foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch

Literature

STC 837; ESTC S104391; Pforzheimer 17

Catalogue Note

First edition, the first book on archery written in English. The Ashburnham—Gallice—Jeanson copy. The book is written in the form of a dialogue between Philologus ("a lover of study") and Toxophilus ("a lover of the bow") who is also a scholar and defends archery as a noble sport. Ascham prefixed his work with a dedication to Henry VIII, who approved of the book and awarded Ascham an annual pension of £10.

Toxophilus was proof that books of instruction could be written succinctly in plain English, for as Ascham remarks in his preface "To All Gentle Men and Yeomen of England": "Many English writers have not done so, but using strange words, as Latin, French, and Italian, do make all things dark and hard."  As such, Taxophilus served as a source book for many subsequent works on the history of archery.