Perfecting and Completing Caxton’s Golden Legend: The Stratigraphy of Non-Homogeneous Copies

Files

Perfecting and Completing.pdf (6.58 MB)

Date

2025-01-15

Authors

Kato, Takako

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

ISSN

9789004689855

DOI

Volume Title

Publisher

Brill

Type

Book chapter

Peer reviewed

Yes

Abstract

Every incunable has a unique and often complicated history. Copies were bound and disbound. Individual leaves were dispersed, collected and re-bound again. This study focuses on William Caxton’s Golden Legend (1483–84), which today survives in thirty-three copies and ten fragments. By interrogating both the copy- and context-specific aspects of these copies, this study identifies different historical strata which exist in the copies of the Golden Legend, fills in gaps in the provenance histories of some copies, and unveils the intricate relationships and extensive network of antiquarians, book collectors and booksellers who were once involved in various attempts to perfect their books.

Description

The file deposited here is ‘the accepted version of the contribution’, i.e., ‘the version which has been accepted for publication by the publisher and which contains all revisions made after peer-reviewing and copy-editing, but which has not yet been typeset in the publisher’s layout’. The Publisher confirms that the following right is reserved to the Contributor: "the right to self-archive the accepted version of the Contribution in online repositories and open archives. The accepted version of the Contribution is defined as the version which has been accepted for publication by the Publisher and which contains all revisions made after peer-reviewing and copy-editing, but which has not yet been typeset in the Publisher’s layout."

Keywords

William Caxton, Golden Legend, Incunabula, Book History, Jacobus de Voragine

Citation

Kato, T. (2025) Perfecting and Completing Caxton’s Golden Legend: The Stratigraphy of Non-Homogeneous Copies. In: Goldfinch, J., Kato, T. and Tokunaga, S. (eds.) Production and Provenance: Copy-Specific Features of Incunabula. Leiden: Brill, pp. 263–316

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/2086/24885

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Research Institute

Institute of Global Challenges and Cultures

Collections

School of Humanities and Performing Arts​