The Collection of the History of England:
London: Printed at London: [by Nicholas Okes], 1621. Quarto in 6s. Item #028745
Decorative engraved title page, [9], 222 pages, one column. Daniel had broken free of the Tudor chroniclers, he was minutely examining sources and citing them for his readers, in what was a more serious work of history. DNB says that "he wrote a prose as lucid as anything the later seventeenth century could manage. It was his judgement that made him reliable: he could look with sympathy as well as disinterest at individuals and the institutions they had to live with. He had a rare sense of the past, and an even rarer sense of the limits of historical understanding...By the 1660s, he had become Daniel the Historian." Scholars have also noted his leaving out Providence was disliked by churchmen of his era. The imprimatur on leaf A1v: "A special priuliedge, license, and authority, is granted by the Kings Majesties letters patents, vunto the autor Samuel Daniel,....dated at Westminster, the 11. of March, in the 15, yeare of his reign of England and of Scotland the one and fifieth." Bound in full contemporary calf, rebacked to style, red leather spine label gilt, damp staining to outer margins of first few leaves, some marginal toning. A very good copy of this early printing. [ESTC S107341, Copies at the Folger, Harvard, the Huntington, Michigan, Yale and Pennsylvania].
Price: $1,500.00