Rare edition of “A cloud of witnesses” with eerie frontispiece

speccoll
Thursday 2 June 2011

The anonymous “Cloud of witnesses” (St Andrews item TypBE.D14XX) came up recently while working through the Edinburgh section of the Typographical Collection. This is the first edition of this work on Scottish martyrs, and was popular enough to be printed in at least 10 editions before 1800. There are only four known copies of the first edition, according to ESTC, and each are accompanied by this somewhat eerie and amateur frontispiece depicting some of the ways that Scottish martyrs died. The St Andrews copy is wanting the main title page and the binding is in poor condition, but the survival of this engraving is very exciting.

Daryl Green

Related topics

Share this story


2 thoughts on "Rare edition of “A cloud of witnesses” with eerie frontispiece"

  • Craig Varley
    Craig Varley
    Friday 17 June 2011, 3.21pm

    and all the more eerie for being somewhat amateur. could you perhaps link directly to the ESTC entry for the title in the future rather than the main ESTC search page?

    Reply
  • St Andrews Rare Books
    St Andrews Rare Books
    Friday 17 June 2011, 3.26pm

    Hi Craig, I've ammended the link, sorry about that. Also, our online catalogue is currently down, but should be back up within the day, so bear with us on that too. Thanks for your comment!

    Reply

Leave a reply to St Andrews Rare Books

Cancel reply

By using this form you agree with the storage and handling of your data by this website.

Subscribe

Enter your email address here to receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 6,466 other subscribers.