ANTIQUARIAN STUDIES FOR CAROLINE SCHOOLBOYS (AND A LONDON BOOKSELLER) ...
GOODWIN, Thomas.
Romanae Historiae Anthologia … An English exposition of the Roman Antiquities, wherein many Roman & English offices are parallel’d, and divers obscure phrases explained. For the use of Abingdon Schoole. Newly revised and inlarged by the authour.
Oxford, Leonard Lichfield for Henry Cripps, 1638.
[bound with:]
—. Moses and Aaron. Civil and Ecclesiastical rites used by the ancient Hebrews … The fifth edition. London, John Haviland, 1634.
Two works bound in one, small 4to, pp. [8], 277, [23]; [8], 300, [12]; title-page of Romanae Historiae Anthologia within a woodcut border, woodcut headpieces and initials; a few spots and stains; but very good copies in a contemporary Oxford binding of blind-ruled calf, joints rubbed, spine chipped at head, free endpapers stained pink; early inscriptions of John Hunt (dated December 1660), ‘Moses Pitts at the White Heart in Little Britaine / Bookeseller’, Phillip Tyrwhitt (to title and p. 1), John Tyrwhitt, James Townshend, and others.
Added to your basket:
Romanae Historiae Anthologia … An English exposition of the Roman Antiquities, wherein many Roman & English offices are parallel’d, and divers obscure phrases explained. For the use of Abingdon Schoole. Newly revised and inlarged by the authour.
Early editions of these two popular schoolbooks on antiquities, often found bound together – a compendium of Roman antiquities and a study of the customs and religious rites of the ancient Jews, originally published in 1614 and 1625 respectively – by the headmaster and scholar Thomas Goodwin (1587–1642). Goodwin graduated MA in 1609 at Magdalen College, Oxford, and later became the first fellow of the newly founded Pembroke College, Oxford (1624).
He wrote both works while headmaster of Abingdon School in Berkshire, and in his letter to the reader in Romanae Historiae Anthologia, claims that if the book is well received, it should be ascribed to the frequent questioning of the students (‘puerorum crebris interrogatiunculis’); but should the work be less appreciated, the reader should blame the frequent whispered chatters of the boys who surrounded the author (‘puerorum crebris circumscrepentium susurris’). These works, much reprinted, were standard schoolbooks well into the eighteenth century, and are frequently found bound together, in combinations of various editions; later iterations often added the Archaeologicae Atticae of Francis Rous (first published 1637).
Provenance: The printer and bookseller Moses Pitt (1639–1697) was active at the White Heart in Little Britain from 1667, where he also held some of the earliest book auctions in London from 1678. He published learned works, had connections to the Royal Society, and is now best known for his Atlas, a project so ambitious that it led to his bankruptcy after publication of four of the intended twelve volumes; and his Cry of the Oppressed (1691), a protest against imprisonment for debt published from the Fleet Prison. Phillip and John Tyrwhitt are possibly the fourth and fifth baronets (1633–1688 and 1663–1741) respectively.
ESTC S103289 and S103224; STC 11694 and 11955. On Pitt, see Harris, ‘Moses Pitt & Insolvency in the London Booktrade in the late seventeenth Century’, in Economics of the British Booktrade 1605–1939 (1985), pp. 176–208.
