JACOBUS DE VORAGINE; CAXTON, William (trans.) The Huth-Martin copy

Fifth and final Wynkyn de Worde edition. In its first printing, the Golden Legend was the largest and most elaborate production of the first printer in English, William Caxton. It is an English translation of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea (c.1267), a collection of legends for the feasts of saints (the Sanctorale) and other major days of the liturgical year (the Temporale). The Legenda aurea was one of the most popular and influential books in the later medieval Western world; it circulated widely, and was repeatedly translated into many vernacular languages. Caxton based his translation on the French version of Jean de Vignay, but he also used the Latin original and a previous English translation, the Gilte Legende, with some personal additions. In reworking the text, Caxton omitted some saints found in Voragine's original, but also added many extra stories (many of them English or Irish) from manuscript sources. His version is unique in its sequence of Old Testament lives from Adam to Judith; in fact, this section of his text is little more than a transcription of the Bible, circumventing then current laws that prevented the publication of the Bible in English. Caxton's successor Wynkyn de Worde first printed the work in 1493, at first omitting the stories from the Bible, and then complete in 1498, 1507, and 1521. After the English Reformation, no further edition was published in England until William Morris. Wynkyn’s 1527 edition is rarely found complete in commerce. Of the other eight copies that have appeared at auction since 1975, all had one or other of repairs affecting text, supplied leaves, facsimile work, or were outright defective. Provenance: Thomas Antrobus (his inscription; 24 August 1598); William Maskell (signature and bookplate); William Simonds Higgs (armorial bookplate); Henry Huth and his son Alfred Henry Huth (red morocco ticket gilt; Sotheby's London 8-11 July 1919, lot 7833); G. D. Smith; M.E.G. (initials on pull-off case); H. Bradley Martin (Sotheby's New York, 1 May 1990, lot 3296); Howard Knohl (Sotheby's NY, Selections From The Fox Pointe Manor Library, 26 Oct. 2016, lot 303).