LLWYD, Humphrey. KROMER, Marcin.

£2,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

Rare first edition of Llwyd s geographical and historical description of Ancient Britain prefixed by his farewell letter to the cartographer Abraham Ortelius dated from Denbigh 30 August 1568, ending with a short Welsh vocabulary. An English translation by Thomas Twyne, The Breuiary of Britayne, was published in the following year. in August 1568, the Welsh scholar Humphrey Lloyd of Demby lay dying. Writing for the last time to his friend Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp, he reported that a very perilous fever hath so torn this body of mine these ten continual days that I [have been] brought to despair of my life. Along with the letter Llwyd enclosed a pair of maps, one of Wales and one of England and Wales, destined for inclusion in Ortelius s atlas. Llwyd further enclosed certain fragments written with mine own hand which (if God had spared me life) you should have received in better order, These fragments belonged to an unfinished topographical description of Britain, more than half of which was devoted to the history and description of Wales Humphrey Llwyd was among the most gifted and provocative scholars of his generation. As MP for Denbigh he was instrumental in the passage of legislation for the translation of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer into the Welsh language. Llwyd s work left a lasting mark on the literatures of both England and Wales. It is unlikely that Camden s great work would have taken quite the same form or even borne the same title without the prior exa

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.