The Amending Of Life

Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1927-01-01. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1927 first edition thus, 4 x 6 inches tall green cloth hardbound, no dust jacket, gilt design to front cover, gilt lettering to spine, top page edges gilt, decorative green orchard design endpapers, xix, 55 pp. plus publisher's ads for series. Very slight staining, rubbing and edgewear to covers. Ink prior owner name to upper margin of front pastedown, with a tiny Berkshire, England bookstore label to the bottom margin. Otherwise, a very good copy - clean and unmarked - of a scarce first edition of this newly edited and revised version of a popular work by Richard Rolle. OCLC (No. 504574452) locates only one copy at institutions worldwide, at The British Library, St. Pancras, in London. ~SP14~ Volume 5 of the 'extra' volumes of the 'little Orchard' series of Catholic devotional/mystical works issued by the British publisher Burns Oates in the 1920s. Eventually the renowned 'little Orchard' series totaled 22 volumes, most of which - like this volume - were new editions by well-regarded English Roman Catholic scholars of their time. In this case, Richard Rolle's work De Emendacione Vitae was 'edited and slightly modernised,' with an introduction, by a writer identified only as A.P., using the 1434 English translation (from Rolle's Latin) by Carmelite scholar Richard Misyn. Richard Rolle (1290/1300-1349) was an English hermit, mystic, and religious writer. He is also known as Richard Rolle of Hampole or de Hampole, since at the end of his life he lived near a Cistercian nunnery in Hampole, Yorkshire. In the words of Nicholas Watson, scholarly research has shown that '[d]uring the fifteenth century he was one of the most widely read of English writers, whose works survive in nearly four hundred English...and at least seventy Continental manuscripts, almost all written between 1390 and 1500.' Emendatio Vitae (Emending of Life) was the most popular of Rolle's works, with 110 manuscripts (17 from the Continent), and seven independent Middle English translations. Richard Misyn (d. 1462?), Carmelite, and probably bishop of Dromore (County Down, Northern Ireland), translated both this work and Rolle's 'Incendium Amoris' into English.