Rare 1694 London A Paraphrase in English on the Following of Christ a Kempis

Description: A Paraphrase in English on the Following of Christ. Written Originaly in Latine, By Thomas a Kempis. By Thomas a Kempis 1694 unknown publisher (London), 4 5/8 x 7 inches tall hardbound, marbled paper-covered boards over red leather spine and tips, gilt lettering to spine, yellow endpapers, [32], 234, [6] pp. Covers rubbed and edgeworn, especially along spine and at tips. Title page, which was replaced by facsimile some time ago, has darkened a bit (see images), but the book is otherwise complete. Some pages have moderate age-toning or foxing, especially the end of the prefatory material which precedes the main text and the first part of Book 1 of the Imitation. Age-toning to outer margins of other pages. Blank endpapers refreshed when last rebound. Otherwise, apart from minor soiling, a good copy of this extremely rare edition. ESTC records only four copies worldwide: two in England (at the British Library and Oxford's Bodleian Library) and two in America (at the Folger Shakespeare and Yale's Beinecke Library). The first English metrical (poetic) translation of Thomas Kempis' Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ), an anonymous translation whose London printer is also unknown. References: Wing (2nd ed.), T957B; ESTC No. R219705; Copinger, 54. Contains: Title page; 32 unnumbered pages by the anonymous translator, with his 'Epistle to the Reader,' a poem in both Latin and English and a one-page Errata; 234 numbered pages with his metrical version of the Imitation; and finally a six-page table of contents. In his 'Epistle,' the translator says, 'Here Reader thou hast Thomas a Kempis in a new dress, his work cobled into Rime, I will not say Translated into verse unless I were more confident of the Translator's Poetry.' The Imitation of Christ was written (or at a minimum, transcribed) by Catholic monk Thomas Kempis (circa 1380-1471), as four separate books completed between 1420 and 1427, at Mount Saint Agnes monastery, in the town of Windesheim, located in what is now the Netherlands. He wrote these works for the instruction of novices of his Augustinian monastic order, followers of Geert Groote's Brethren of the Common Life. But the writings quickly became popular among all the literate faithful. They were copied together in one manuscript as early as 1427, by Kempis, and copied (and later printed) together fairly consistently thereafter. Soon after hand-copied versions of the Imitatio Christi initially appeared, the printing press was invented, and it was among the first books after the Bible to be printed. There is probably no other book other than the Bible which has been printed in so many editions and translations. In the past six hundred years, the work has been translated from Kempis' medieval Latin into nearly every language in the world.

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