Heywood, Thomas

Contemporary manuscript copy in a scribal secretary hand, complete with "The prohemium or Introduction," the poem divided into three Books with marginal notes in the same hand and catchwords, 244 pages, oblong octavo (100 x 162 mm), early seventeenth century; occasional slight soiling. Contemporary panelled calf with gilt lozenge centrepiece; restored at corners, rubbed.

Faunce-De-Laune family of Sharstead Court, Kent — H.W. Pratley (Sotheby's, 21 July 1988, lot 17). acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch

CELM HyT 3.8

"If there be any in this Multitude
that in the art of Love is dull and rude
Mee let them reade & theise my lines rehearse
he shalbe made a doctor by my verse..."

One of four known manuscripts of the first complete English translation of Ovid's Art of Love, and the only complete copy in private hands. Ovid's erotic Ars Amatoria was one of the most popular classical works of the English Renaissance, and Heywood's translation, first published anonymously as Love's School in 1600, went through at least twelve editions in the seventeenth century. Heywood had translated the work some years before the translation was published, and later complained that it had been published against his will, and was a work that "out of my juniority and want of judgement, I committed to the view of some private friends, but with no purpose of publishing, or further communicating them."