Thomas Coryate | Coryat's Crudities, London, 1611, nineteenth century dark green morocco gilt

Thomas Coryate

Coryats Crudities. Hastily gobled up in five Moneths travells... Newly digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, & now dispersed to the nourishment of the travelling Members of this Kingdome. London: W. S[tansby], 1611

FIRST EDITION, small 4to (209 x 152mm.), elaborate engraved allegorical title-page by William Hole, woodcut facing first page of dedicatory epistle "To the High and Mighty Prince Henry, Prince of Wales", 4 engraved plates (3 folding), engraved in-text illustration, woodcut initials and head-pieces, errata leaf, nineteenth-century dark green morocco gilt, spine with raised bands in six gilt compartments, gilt edges, marbled endpapers, inner dentelles, some leaves with minor dampstaining at upper margin, one plate with minor repair to lower margin and small tear at inner margin of pp. 13-14 (not affecting image or text) 

Coryate's eccentric account of his peregrinations on foot through Europe in 1608. A "there and back again" to Venice, Coryate ended his journey by literally hanging up his shoes in the parish church at Odcombe. The book is renowned for its series of faux-heroic elegies on the author's achievements by Jonson, Campion, Donne and others of the Mermaid Tavern set.

LITERATURE

Keynes, Donne 70; Wing C5808

PROVENANCE

Henry Hucks Gibbs (1819-1907) of Aldenham House, Herts, Governor of the Bank of England between 1875-1877 and noted bibliophile, who edited texts for the Early English Text Society and the Roxburghe Club, and who was an active member of the

Philological Society: armorial bookplate to front pastedown and manuscript ownership inscription dated 1883 to preliminary blank; bought of Ellis, £42: pencil inscription in Gibbs' hand to preliminary blank