Projects
Norwich Cathedral Foxes book of Martyrs
Conservation of a rare surviving copy of the heavily illustrated 2nd edition of this important work, involving extensive repair of the textblock and finally rebinding into a usable and safe condition.
The first edition of what is known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was published in a single volume in 1563. The second expanded and more heavily illustrated edition was published in 2 volumes in 1570, of which this is an example. As bindings of both volumes are missing, the two have been stacked together as one. The annotation on the first page of volume 2 (Wm.vincent 1764) indicates that at that date the book was in 2 distinct volumes. Also, the original tawed sewing supports still attached to the spine of volume 2 are only the width of that volume and do not extend to volume 1. The page numbering begins at p.983 and ends at p.2270, running through both volumes. The pagination runs from 3f-5y, a total of 108 gatherings mostly of 6 leaves. We can therefore surmise that there are about one thousand pages missing of the original, mostly from the front of volume 1. There are also a further 8 missing leaves within the text block either torn or cut out, sometimes leaving fragments attached.
