The Life Of St Edmund King And Martyr: John Lydgate's Illustrated Verse Life Presented to Henry VI

The British Library , 2004 8vo (25 cm), [6], 23, [3] pp, 120 ff of facsimile. Publisher's cloth and dust jacket (dj slightly rubbed at extremities, small tears at tje tail and the head of the spine). "On Christmas Eve 1433, the young King Henry VI arrived at the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, one of the largest religious foundations in fifteenth-century England. To cement the abbey's relationship with the king, abbot William Curteys conceived the idea of commemorating Henry's visit with a 'life' of the Anglo-Saxon king, St Edmond, the patron saint of the abbey. It is hard to overstate the importance of the resulting manuscript, both as a monument to the development of the English language, and for its illustrations - 120 images, forming narrative sequences integrated to form a coherent visual parallel to the text and with a careful fidelity to detail. The completed manuscript that was presented to the young king remained in his library until after his deposition, and although it left royal hands for a time, it reappears in the inventories of the library of Henry VIII. It was acquired by The British Library in 1742. In both the number and quality of its illustrations and in the degree of integration, The Life of St Edmond, King and Martyr is unsurpassed." (from the publisher's synopsis)