Books and Manuscripts

Camden, William
Britannia sive Florentissimorum Regnorum, Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae...
London: Ralph Newbery, 1586. First edition. Two parts in one volume. 8vo. (xvi), 556, (12) pp.; without cancels E8 and G8 (as sometimes occurs in other copies). Illustrated with a woodcut printer's device on each title-page and woodcut initials throughout. Contemporary tan calf, elaborately stamped in blind, top brass clasp intact, loss at spine ends, wear along joints; red stained edges; endpapers sometime renewed; front and rear hinges starting; title-page darkened and spotted, old ownership inscription, dated 1640 on same ("Ex dono Amici…Josephi Shallit Novmb. 26. 1640"), other contemporary inscriptions in gutter of same and now smudged; scattered spotting to text; contemporary marginalia in fore-edge of O3. Printing and the Mind of Man 101

Scarce first edition of William Camden's groundbreaking history of Britain and Ireland. “If Camden was not the first English historian (in the modern sense of the word), topographer and antiquarian, he was certainly the first to relate the three studies, and his Britannia, primarily topographical, is the first book which shows, even in a rudimentary form, the need to evaluate sources. It was the revolutionary subject matter, and its even more revolutionary treatment of the subject, which made it at once the vehicle and the model for research in all three subjects for the next two hundred and fifty years.” (PMM, p. 61) Incredibly popular upon publication, Camden's work would go through six more editions during his lifetime, five in Latin and one in English. 

We presume Joseph Shalit to be the same Jewish-Italian scholar who lived during the second half of the 17th century. Born in Safed, he lived in Verona, directed a Talmudical school, was the author of Ḥokmat ha-Mishkan, and edited Ḥibbur Ma'asiyyot, among other works.