Edited by Cyndia Susan Clegg,
with textual commentary by Randall McLeod
Huntington Library Press, 2005

Cyndia Clegg knew something was odd when she sat down to look closely at two copies of the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland at The Huntington back in the early 1990s. Shakespeare had consulted the Chronicles, which surveys the history of the British Isles from the earliest times well into the reign of Elizabeth I, and Clegg was working on an article on Richard II. She thought to herself, “These copies are quite different!”

Clegg began exploring copies in the British Library, the Cambridge University Library, and several more in private hands. The result is this facsimile of Holinshed’s history of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Clegg has used the Huntington’s “Melton Holinshed” (pictured above)—named after the previous owner of the book—as the primary text. It comprises a complete set of 16th-century page proofs—that is, original pages with proofreading corrections. She supplements it with variants from a total of eight other copies (three of which are also from The Huntington).

Randall McLeod uses the Melton Holinshed to analyze 16th-century printing practices. Clegg’s essay explains how so many substantially different copies could have entered the marketplace, detailing the three stages of censorship by Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council. “Censorship is always going to exist in one form or another,” Clegg concedes. “We learn more if we ask, ‘Who has the power to censor?’” Far from mere propaganda, the variant copies reveal subtle concerns about the depiction of Mary Queen of Scots’ trial and execution, anti-Catholicism, and justice.

– Matt Stevens