John Atkins

London, 1625. Modern cloth binding with five raised bands, corners slightly rubbed, red morocco title-label with gilt lettering. Internally very clean and unmarked except in a very few cases with minor stains and ink smudges and with very small page tears to 10 pages (repaired), 10 words missing from 4 pages due to tears all have been added in pencil. At the end of the volume there is a 28 page "Alphabetticall Table of the Whole Worke". The final page has a tear with paper loss to the bottom which slightly impacts upon the text. A facsimile of this page has been added to compensate for this loss of text. Ex-libris on inner top board: Eric Gerald Stanley, Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor, University of Oxford. Joseph Hall (1574-1656) satirist, moralist and polemicist, particularly in defending episcopacy, and author of devotional works, including contemplations carrying a political slant. This volume includes 53 separate title-pages of which 5 (all dated 1625) act as a cover pages for various volumes of the Contemplations. The remaining title-pages are either dated 1624 or, in 7 cases, are undated. The general index to this volume lists 33 individual works, many of which have sub-sections / books. This volume has the characteristics of STC 12635 except that the title-pages of books 10 and 11 of the third volume of Contemplations are dated 1624 not 1625. The facsimile title-page at the start of the volume is from STC 12635.5. As a co-operative publication involving different printers (Miles Flesher, John Haviland, and John Beale) and bookseller- publishers (Thomas Pavier, Nathaniel Butter, Hanna Barrett, and George Winder), Hall's Works of 1625 were clearly fraught with production risks, and this is evident from this volume. There are errors in pagination and signatures. At pages a3 and a4 there is an index to the separate works in the volume which enables the contents to be collated as complete. The text, which has pagination errors, has also been collated as complete with no missing pages of text.