Misc

The online version of the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) is a database that is designed to include bibliographic records of surviving copies of letterpress produced in Great Britain or any of its dependencies worldwide from 1473–1800 (http://estc.bl.uk). One of this online catalogue's advantages is that it has enhanced the surviving copies' information. A sample search of this online catalogue, however, soon reveals that it contains few entries detailing holdings in Japanese libraries. This is simply because no systematic research has examined Japanese holdings.To register Japanese entries in the ESTC, the present writer started to compile a list of early English printed books housed in Japanese libraries, with a special focus on books dating from the 15th and 16th centuries. Of the various copies that the writer has found so far, this paper sheds light on a unique collection, housed in the University of Tokyo Library, which the British government donated to support the Tokyo UL's restoration, which suffered great damage from the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. This paper's appendix provides the list of all the 16th-century copies of this special collection, some of which have not been recorded before.研究ノート

"This paper is a reprint of the catalogue prepared for the exhibition 'D. S. Brewer Mythography Collection', held at the Hiyoshi Media Centre from 24–28 November 2009 on the occasion of the 25th congress of the Japan Society for Medieval English Studies. In the spring of 2009 Toshiyuki Takamiya, Professor Emeritus at Keio University, donated the D. S. Brewer Mythography Collection to the Keio University Library. This collection was formed by the late Derek Stanley Brewer (1923–2008), a leading expert on Geoffrey Chaucer, the founder of academic publisher D. S. Brewer (now Boydell Brewer); Brewer also served as Master of the Emmanuel College from 1977–1990. The Mythography Collection comprises 190 items, including 16th–20th-century books mostly on Greek mythology and Brewer's typescripts of lectures, research notes and slides. Scholars and students from the Department of English examined the whole collection and recorded it bibliographically during the summer of 2009. On the basis of their research results, 10 representative items were chosen and displayed at the exhibition. They include Boccacio's Genealogie (Paris, 1511); Psd-Apollodorus's Bibliotheca (Rome, 1555); Vincenzo Cartari's Les images de dievx des anciens (Lyons, 1581); Natalis Conti's Mythologiae (Padua,1616); Alexander Ross's Mystagogus poeticus (London, 1648); Lactantius's Divinarum institutionum libri VII (Antwerp, 1570); Gerardus Vossius's De theologia gentili... (Amsterdam, 1668); Thomas Munckerus's (ed.) Mythographi latini (Amsterdam, 1681); Francesco Bardi's Ovidio istorico, politico, morale (Venice, 1696); and D. S. Brewer's typescript.

Medieval literary works popular in manuscript culture were not necessarily inherited by the print culture. Then which texts were chosen to be published by the first generation of printers in England? This paper offers a preliminary overview of the reception of medieval literature in England in the transitional period from manuscript to print by comparing the list of publications of William Caxton, England's first printer, and that of his follower Wynkyn de Worde. While Caxton's publishing style was largely influenced by the manuscript tradition and distinguished by his translation (especially from French prose romance), de Worde seems to have been more active than his master in not only expanding the market for religious works and romance (both prose and verse) but also cultivating a relationship with his contemporary authors.