Holinshed (Raphael) The First and Second [and Third] Volumes of Chronicles, 3 vol. in 2, second edition, double column, black letter, general and divisional titles within woodcut architectural or decorative borders, woodcut head- and tail-pieces, decorative initials and printer's device, lacking initial and final blanks in vol.1-2, vol.2 cancels and replacement ff. within sigs. Q-S, both vol. water-stained at lower corners and occasionally at upper corners, vol.3 7O4 blank, lacking title, A6, table ff. F4 & G2-5 (G5 with colophon and printer's device verso) (all supplied in facsimile) and final ?blank, numerous cancels and replacement ff. in sigs. 6M, 6V-7I, and 7L&M, preliminaries and B1 repaired with loss of text to A2&5 and some loss to printed side-notes of B1, 5N5 lower corner torn and repaired with loss of text, some water-staining, all vol. with wormholes in places, some marginal repairs, occasional short marginal tears, spotting or mostly light staining, and new endpapers, uniformly bound in contemporary ornately blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, remains of metal clasps, rebacked, preserving original backstrips in compartments (with some loss; one compartment of vol.1 restored), later sympathetic labels (chipped with little loss of text), rubbed and marked, [STC 13569; cf. Maslen, ‘Three Eighteenth-Century Reprints of the Castrated Sheets in Holinshed's Chronicles’, The Library, ser. 5, XII (1958), pp. 120-4], folio, [[H. Denham] at the expenses of John Harrison, George Bishop, Rafe Newberie, Henrie Denham and Thomas Woodcocke], 1587. sold not subject to return.
⁂ The second edition of the Chronicles, used by Shakespeare as a source for his Richard II, Richard III, Macbeth, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Henry VIII and Cymbeline. The publication of this edition was brought to the attention of Queen Elizabeth by the Privy Council, and certain sections which she considered harmful were ordered to be removed (passages dealing with Anglo-Scottish relations, the Babington plot and Leicester's campaign in the Low Countries). On 1st February, 1587, the Archbishop of Canterbury was ordered to recall the work and reform it; the result being numerous cancels in the second and third volumes. In the 18th century three reprints of these so-called ‘castrated’ leaves were published, and many copies are found with these reprints inserted for the cancelled sections. Copies vary as to the cancelled and substituted leaves, accordingly we offer ours sold not subject to return.
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