Navy cloth biinding with gilt title on the spine.

• We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

• Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list.

Condition: Very Good. None (illustrator). A smart copy of John Stow’s survey of London under Elizabeth, written in the year 1598 and published here in 1920. Bound in the publisher’s original cloth with Henry Morley’s notes. Composed of a survey of London’s housing, hospitals, different areas and much more. Written by John Stow in 1598, who was an English historian and antiquarian at the time. With a biography of Stow and notes by English professor of literature, Henry Morley. Internally, firmly bound. Pages bright and clean. A very Good book.

John Stow (also Stowe; 1524/25 – 5 April 1605) was an English historian and antiquarian. He wrote a series of chronicles of English history, published from 1565 onwards under such titles as The Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles, The Chronicles of England, and The Annales of England; and also A Survey of London (1598; second edition 1603). A. L. Rowse has described him as “one of the best historians of that age; indefatigable in the trouble he took, thorough and conscientious, accurate – above all things devoted to truth”.

The work for which Stow is best known is his Survey of London (original spelling: A Survay of London), published in 1598. This was a work of choreography: a detailed ward-by-ward topographical and historical tour of the city, providing a unique account of its buildings, social conditions and customs. A second, revised edition appeared in 1603. Following Stow’s death, a third edition, with additions by Anthony Munday appeared in 1618; a fourth by Munday and Humfrey Dyson in 1633; a fifth with interpolated amendments by John Strype in 1720; and a sixth by the same editor in 1754. The edition of 1598 was reprinted, edited by William John Thoms, in 1842, in 1846, and (with illustrations) in 1876. An edition based on that of 1598, edited by Henry Morley, was published in 1889, and has been reprinted on several occasions since.

Other copies: A critical edition, based on that of 1603 and edited in two volumes by C. L. Kingsford, was published in 1908, and republished with additional notes in 1927. This remains the standard scholarly edition. A more popular single-volume edition was published in Everyman’s Library, with an introduction by H. B. Wheatley, in 1912 (revised edition 1956), and has been frequently reprinted.