ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR VENACULAR POEMS IN ENGLAND

DU BARTAS, GUILLAUME DE SALLUSTE (+) (SYLVESTER, JOSHUA - TRANSLATOR)

Du Bartas his diuine weekes, and workes with a compleate collectio of all the other most delight-full workes translated and written by yt famous philomusus, Iosuah Syluester Gent.

London, Robert Young, 1633.

Folio. In contemporary full calf with five raised bands. Small paper-label pasted on to upper part of spine. Wear to extremities. Boards with scratches and a few wormholes, corners bumped and capitals chipped. Missing small part of leather on lower compartment. Vague dampstaining throughout and a few worm-tracts. Engraved title-page. (30), 345, (1), 351-416, 415-657, (1) + frontispiece.

‎Rare later English translation of Du Bartas exceptionally popular "La Semaine" and "Seconde semaine" and several miner poems. La Semaine became immensely popular and was quickly translated into most European languages. Du Bartas was extremely popular in early modern England, and was still being read widely in the later seventeenth century even as his reputation in France began to decline.

La Semaine was first translated into English in 1598 (“No perfect copy know” Lowndes) and the present folio-edition which include several of his lesser popular work, was first published in 1605 and was reprinted six times up until 1641. All editions are scarce and are rarely found in the trade.

“No other poem (besides those in the Bible itself) was read as widely as the Semaines were across early modern English and Scottish society. Based on references to Sylvester in print, Snyder believed that ‘Clearly everyone in pre-Restoration England who had received a literary education read the ‘Weekes’ ande almost all…. Admired it’. According to Gordon Braden, it was ‘probably the most popular vernacular poem in translation in early modern England’.” (Auger, Du Bartas' Legacy in England and Scotland).

Order-nr.: 60823