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- # SIXTH EDITION, 1602.
## Overview - What this is (type, form, dates, scope)
This is a section from a text discussing the sixth edition of "Venus and Adonis," published in 1602. The section, extracted from the file [pdf-01KG6Q7Q25RHMFT3SJXPV18VFF.txt](arke:01KG6S2X2EBB305ENM00G16GWA), provides details about the printing, physical characteristics, and provenance of the edition. It is part of the [Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Sonnets, and Pericles (Facsimile Editions)](arke:01KG6S3KNZT62WVVW4VT384KPF) collection, which is contained within the [PDF Workflow Main Test 2026-01-30T00:26:53](arke:01KG6NWQ2H2K4PGG7H4ZHYCZ3Y) collection.
## Context - Background and provenance from related entities
The section follows a discussion of the "Bodleian (Malone) copy, 1600?" ([arke:01KG6S4CW103CEZZWTEMXCX8XZ]) and precedes "No. IX." ([arke:01KG6S4DDRA910DG9P3X7BV1EK]). The text identifies Humphry Lownes as the likely printer for William Leake. It notes alterations in the title page and describes the physical dimensions of the British Museum copy. The section traces the ownership of the British Museum copy from 1790 to its acquisition by the museum.
## Contents - What it contains, key subjects and details
The section details the printing of the 1602 edition of "Venus and Adonis," including a description of the device used and the discovery of copies in the Bodleian Library, the British Museum, and the Earl of Macclesfield's library. It highlights a typographical variation in the title page. The text also includes details on the provenance of the British Museum copy, including the prices paid at various sales and the names of previous owners such as George Steevens and James Bindley. The section also includes a manuscript note from a seventeenth-century hand.
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- SIXTH EDITION, 1602.
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- SIXTH EDITION, 1602.
The device was probably that of Humphry Lownes, who seems to have printed the volume for Leake. An edition of Robert Southwell’s *Saint Peter’s Complaint*, which was probably printed
in the same year (1602), although the title-page is undated, bears the same device and has the imprint, ‘Printed by H[umphry] L[ownes] for William Leake.’ Three copies
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VENUS AND ADONIS 65
SIXTH EDITION, 1602.
survive—respectively in the Bodleian Library, the British Museum, and the Earl of Macclesfield’s library.
An alteration was made in the type of the title-page after a few copies were struck off: for the comma which originally followed the word ‘vulgus’ in the middle of the first line of the Latin quotation, there was substituted a colon, which figures in two of the three extant copies of the edition. The copy in the British Museum alone has the comma on the title-page. There is no other distinction in the type of the three copies.¹
The British Museum copy of the 1602 edition, with the unique ‘comma’ title-page, measures $5\frac{3}{16}'' \times 3\frac{3}{8}''$. The ownership can be traced some distance back. It was bought by the commentator, George Steevens, at the sale of Dr. Chauncey’s library on April 15, 1790, for eight shillings. James Bindley paid £1 11s. 6d. for it at the Steevens sale on May 21, 1800. The price leapt up at Bindley’s sale in 1819 to £42, when it was bought by Mr. Strettel of Canonbury. At Strettel’s sale, in 1841, the bidding only reached £26 5s. 0d. and no sale was then effected, but George Daniel soon afterwards acquired it for £40 8s. 6d. Daniel sold the copy to the British Museum at a slightly higher price. There are manuscript notes, dealing with the successive changes of ownership, in the hands of Steevens (who knew of no other copy), Bindley, and Daniel. On Sig. B 1 (line 303) is the following good manuscript note in a seventeenth-century hand:—‘To bid the wind a bace. Base or Bace—a sport used among country people called Prison-Base in which some persue to take others
¹ The Cambridge editors vaguely credit each of the three copies with typographical peculiarities, and treat each as representative of a different edition, thus attributing to Leake three editions in 1602. A comparison of the three does not support this allegation. A careful collation of the Earl of Macclesfield’s copy, which was kindly lent to the British Museum by the Countess of Macclesfield for the purpose, with the British Museum copy, shows that the two are at all points identical in type, save for the punctuation on the title-page. The paper of the Bodleian copy is perhaps of a quality slightly inferior to that of the Museum and Macclesfield copies.
- title
- SIXTH EDITION, 1602.