Beschreibung:

SIMON [APPLEBY] ("the Anker of London Wall", fl. 1512-39) . The fruyte of redempcyon . [Westminster:] Wynkyn de Worde 21 May 1530. 4 o (184 x 131 mm). Collation : A 4 B 6 C 4 D 6 E 4 . 24 leaves. Black letter. Wynkyn de Worde's Caxton device on E4 v ; full-page woodcut of the Crucifixion (Hodnett 860) on A1 r ; half-page woodcut Peniteas cito libellus (Hodnett 443) on A3 r ; 18 smaller woodcut and metalcut illustrations from the life of Christ. (Some corners repaired.) Modern brown morocco gilt, edges gilt, by Bedford. Provenance : Estelle Doheny (morocco bookplate; purchased from A.S.W. Rosenbach, 4 May 1943) - donated to SMS 1943. EXCEEDINGLY RARE: ONE OF ONLY TWO COPIES RECORDED, AND THE ONLY COPY IN AMERICA. Simon the Anker, derives his name from anchorite: a person who withdraws from the world to live a solitary life of silence and prayer, usually in strict confined quarters or cells. In the later Middle Ages an achorite's cell was often attached to parish churches. See R.M. Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (1914), pp. 73-198 and 203-63. Of the twenty woodcuts used to illustrate this tract, Hodnett lists four (Hodnett 393, 417, 637, 640) that Wynkyn de Worde specifically used for this and his other editions of Fruyte of redempcyon (1514, 1517 and 1532). Five are from the remarkable series of metal cuts first used by de Worde in the Horae of 1502 (Hodnett 625, 627, 628, 629, 630), and the remaining reoccur in other works printed by Wynken de Worde in the 1520s and 1530s (Hodnett 641, 642, 645, 649, 650, 664, 668, 672, 860). STC 22559. See E. Hodnett, English Woodcuts, 1480-1535 (Oxford, 1973).