The Boke of Husbandry
London: Thomas Berthelet, 1534 [but ca. 1540].
Small octavo (i.e., demy sextodecimo in eights?) (5 5/16” x 3 ½”, 135mm x 89mm): 2 (modern) binder’s blanks, A6 B-M8 N2, 2 (modern) binder’s blanks [$5 signed; –E5, G4]. 96 leaves, pp. [12] (title-page, blank, 2pp. prologue (and beginning of table), 8pp. table), foll. 1-13, 16, 15, 14, 17-30, 230, 32-45, 49, 47-56, 51-66, 68-75, 81-90. [= foll. 90.; pp. xii, 180] Collated perfect with the BL copy. Letterpress title within a woodcut architectural border (McKerrow & Ferguson 30, with "1534" in sill), woodcut initials.
Bound in later (XVIIIc) red morocco, with an extra-gilt border to the boards. On the spine, five raised bands with a gilt roll. In the panels, a lion rampant with mullets in the corners, all within a double gilt fillet border. Title gilt (FITZHE|RBARDE|HUSBAND) to green morocco in the second panel. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards, continuing into the gilt inside dentelle. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt. Green silk marking ribbon.
Front board a little splayed. Some scuffing to the extremities, and bumps to the fore-corners. Marginal loss to G2 (fol. 42). Mild dampstaining up to G1. On the front paste-down, lithographed armorial bookplate of William Charles de Meuron, (7th) Earl Fitzwilliam (by John Vinycomb, 1920). On the recto of the first free end-paper, the armorial bookplate of William Allen Potter.
Published perhaps as early as 1523 (in quarto), Fitzherbert’s book on the ways of the humble farmer might be called the first vernacular English work on farming. The colophon, underscoring the import of such an innovation, notes that “mayster Fitz herbarde” (whence the syntax of the title-label) “dydde not/ in his youthe, but after he had/ exercysed husbandry, with/ greate experyence./ xl. yeres.” “bare to the weale of ths mooste/ noble realme.” Although over the years there has been doubt that the book is Anthony Fitzherbert’s rather than his brother John’s, there is no serious reason to doubt the traditional ascription.
The Boke of Husbandry is an exceptionally wide-ranging handbook, intended not for the lowly plower of fields but for the literate and thinking gentleman farmer, one of the ideals of the Anglo-American proto-middle-class. Fitzherbert writes on dung, yes, but also expands the traditional remit of a farming manual. To wit, fol. 57 offers “A shorte information for a yonge gentylman, that entendeth to thryve.” That is only the beginning of Fitzherbert’s catholic advising; he goes on to specify the proper sort of wife, suggestions in spending and keeping accounts, and modes of prayer. His prologue begins, after all, with a quotation from the book of Job (5:7, though rendered a little differently): homo nascitur ad laborem, sicut avis ad volandum (man is born to work, just as a bird to flying).
“Billy” de Meuron Wentworth-Fitzwilliam (1872–1943), born in Canada, succeeded to the Earldom in 1902. He was viewed as an outsider because of his birth, and so his ownership of this manual of husbandry — having come unexpectedly to be a significant landowner and millionaire — is especially telling. As his bookplate demonstrates, he was a distinguished and dedicated officer in the Second Boer War. The present item was sold at the 1948 (his son, the 8th Earl, died in a tragic air crash in that year) Sotheby’s sale of his library from Wentworth Woodhouse for the astounding price of £75.
The book then passed into the hands of another soldier, Lt. Col. William Allen Potter, High Sherriff of Nottinghamshire and a prolific collector of almanacs and other handbooks. His collection was sold at Bonhams in 2003. Acquired in the same rooms in 2007 (lot 224).
ESTC S122112 (STC2 10966), McKerrow & Ferguson 30.
Item #6JLR0021
Price: $24,000