DANETT, Thomas.
A Continuation of the Historie of France, from the Death of Charles the Eight where Comines endeth, till the Death of Henry the Second …
London, Printed by Thomas East for Thomas Charde, 1600.
4to, pp. [8], 148; B2 is a cancel on a stub; title-page within a border of printer’s tools, woodcut headpieces and initials; a couple of marginal wormtracks, not touching text, withal a very good, clean crisp copy in contemporary or early calf, borders ruled in gilt and blind, ties wanting; Kimbolton Castle booklabel of the Dukes of Manchester, later bookplate.
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A Continuation of the Historie of France, from the Death of Charles the Eight where Comines endeth, till the Death of Henry the Second …
First edition, an original history composed in sequel to Danett’s translation of The Historie of Philip de Commines (1596), covering the history of France from 1498 to 1559.
It includes several passages of Latin poetry rendered into rhymed English verse, and was intended as an independent work – published in quarto not the folio of the Commines.
Danett (1543–1601) was raised on the Continent, whither his family had fled after his father supported the Duke of Suffolk’s rising against Mary in 1554. He translated the Mémoires of Phillip de Commines while still a student and dedicated it to his patron the Earl of Leicester, but it was not published until 1596, then dedicated to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, a cousin. His translation was liberal, corrected errors in the original, added notes, and enlivened a rather flat source with lively metaphors.
In the dedication (to Lord Buckhurst) to his Continuation Danett explains that in 1577 he had experienced the ‘blouddie, cruell, and barbarous’ wars of religion in France first hand – ‘we found such a wildernes in all the country between Bayonne and Bourdeaux, that whole forests and woods were turned up and consumed, the townes utterly desolated, the people despearsed’ – that he could not bring himself to take his history further than 1559. He hopes by rather that his history will ‘teach Princes … to live peaceably at home’.
STC 6234; A Continuation was later re-issued, with a cancel title and the dedication cut, as A Survey of France (1618).
