De Uiris Illustribus - On Famous Men

Leland John, Carley James P., Brett Caroline

Equipped with a commission from Henry VIII, John Leland began to record the contents of English monastic libraries in 1533 before they were dispersed. His booklists were compiled as the primary resources for his comprehensive dictionary of British writers in four books, entitled "De uiris illustribus". This remarkable testament to medieval and early modern habits of book collecting, but also to history and national identity, lay incomplete at Leland's death. The sole extant witness to the author's ambitious task is the autograph manuscript, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. gen. c. 4. Although antiquaries made use of "De uiris illustribus" over the next generations it did not see its way into print until 1709 when Anthony Hall produced a careless edition, a significant number of passages omitted, under the title "Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis". Hall's text has formed the basis for subsequent scholarship. This new edition is based on a thorough examination of the autograph, supplemented with readings from John Bale's epitome, now Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.7.15 (753). True to Leland's original text, this new edition shows how unreliable and misleading Hall's was in many respects. It includes a complete English translation, published on facing pages accompanying the Latin text. The translation seeks to capture Leland's own excitement with his project and also to convey his shifts in interpretation during the process of revision: the text mirrors in miniature the stages of the English reformation under Henry VIII. The extensive introduction provides a full history of the manuscript, examines sources, and shows the relationship of the text to Leland's booklists and other contemporary documents.

About the author

James P. Carley is Distinguished Research Professor at York University, Associate Fellow of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and the foremost authority on the library of King Henry VIII. A specialist in Old and Middle English, the history of manuscripts, and in bibliography and the early Tudor period, he has published widely.

Reviews

"'John Leland, a charismatic and ultimately tragic humanist man of letters at the court of Henry VIII, produced a capacious and distinctive history of British literary life at a crucial moment of English history. While Leland's peers and successors freely borrowed from his work, Leland's whole and distinctive vision lay submerged beneath his messy manuscript remains. But now, finally, Leland has found the editor he deserves. James Carley, the world's leading expert on Leland and his Henrician contexts, has laboured for decades on this superb edition and translation of the De uiris illustribus; it will prove a landmark in the history of medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation scholarship" – David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania