Bod-Inc: D-118
Doctrinal
Le doctrinal de sapience [English].
Analysis of Content
A1r [Introductory note.] Incipit: ‘[T]his that is writen in this lytyl boke . . .’
A1v [Introductory note, translated from the French.] Incipit: ‘[T]his present boke in frenshe is of right grete prouffyt . . .’
A1v [Table of contents.]
A3r Guy de Roye [pseudo-]: ‘The doctrinal of sapyence'. Translated by William Caxton, as stated in the colophon. The Doctrinal of sapience edited from Caxton's printed edition, 1498, ed. Joseph Gallagher (Heidelberg, 1993).
L10r [Colophon.]
Imprint
Imprint: Westminster: William Caxton, [after 7 May 1489]. Folio.
Collation
Collation: A–I8 K L10.
Illustrations: Two woodcuts: see BMC.
References
ISTC: id00302000
GW: GW 8625;
Hain: HC 14017;
Goff: Goff D‑302;
BMC: BMC XI;
Proctor: Pr 9676;
Others: Blades, Caxton, 198-202 no. 71; Blake, Caxton, 27, B33; Caxton, Exhibition, BL, 82-4, no. 86; de Ricci, Caxton, 40; Duff 127; Needham, Pardoner, 90, no. Cx 94; Oates 4106; Painter, Caxton, 214; Sheppard 7409-10; STC 21431.
LCN: 14029962
Copies
Copy number: D-118(1)
Wanting most of A3 and B1, 2, replaced with blank leaves.
Binding: Eighteenth-century marbled pasteboards.
Size: 282 × 205 × 22 mm.
Size of leaf: 275 × 191 mm.
A few early marginal notes in Latin and English; on L10v, a poem in a fifteenth/sixteenth-century English hand: ‘Fle vii and kepe well x | And dred ye nowht to dye then | Spende well v and use well vii | And sekyrly thou shalt goo to heuyn'; similar to, but longer than R. H. Robbins, Secular Lyrics of the XIV and XV Centuries (Oxford, 1952), no. 83.
Provenance and date of acquisition unknown; not in Fysher, Catalogus (1738); possibly part of Rawlinson's bequest of 1755.
Former Bodleian shelfmark: Auct. QQ sup. 1.5.
SHELFMARK: Arch. G d.5.
Copy number: D-118(2)
Wanting gatherings K and L.
Binding: Eighteenth-century diced russia; the spine gold-tooled; marbled pastedowns.
Size: 250 × 183 × 17 mm.
Size of leaf: 242 × 173 mm.
A few early marginal notes. On C7r several inscriptions of the name ‘William'. On G7v: ‘Graham' and ‘Ad Fleming'.
On rear pastedown, a nineteenth-century engraving depicting ‘Earl Rivers presenting his Book & Caxton his Printer to Edw. 4, the Queen & Prince . . .', cf. Douce 180 (C‑191(1)).
Provenance: Possibly John Ratcliffe (†1776); sale (1776), lot 1661. Gustavus Brander (1720-1787); sale (1790), lot 1012; see Douce's copy of the sale cataloge, annotated with the price £0. 2. 6, and de Ricci, Caxton, no. 40/9. Francis Douce (1757-1834); armorial book-plate. Bequeathed in 1834.
SHELFMARK: Douce 148.
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