Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle. The Historie of Irelande from the First Inhabitation Thereof, Unto the Yeare 1509. Collected by Raphaell Hollinshed, & Continued till Yeare 1547 by Richarde Stanyhurst. Edited by Liam Miller and Eileen Power with Cancels Restored and the Woodcut Illustrations of the First Edition. Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1979. Pp xxiv, 36. Small folio. Brown buckram, title label stamped to spine, illustrated dust jacket. Blind stamp to fly-leaf and title page. A very good copy.

Dolmen Editions XXVII. One of 850 copies printed.

Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, first printed in 1577, is one of the great historical source-books. Shakespeare used the English and Scottish volumes to derive the plots of several of his plays. Holinshed used the talents of several contemporaries to assemble, edit and extend existing historical and topographical works. For the Irish volume Richard Stanyhurst (son of the Recorder of the City of Dublin) compiled the Description of Ireland, the third book of the history. When the 1577 edition was in preparation, the Privy Council objected to certain passages in the text. This resulted in a number of cancelled and substituted leaves. The original texts have been restored in this edition and the replacements printed as appendices. A unique feature of the 1577 edition was the remarkable series of woodcuts which accompanied the text, all of which are reproduced in this superb reproduction.