The description of Britain, translated from Richard of Cirencester

About this book

8vo. ff. [2] (blank), pp. xxiii, [1] (blank), 166, 127, [1], f. [1] (blank), [2] (plates),). Signatures: [a]8 b4 B-L8 M3 A8 C-H8 I4 K4. Half morocco. Gilt filets and gilded spine. Includes maps, folded plates, facsimile. The first folded map is signed by C. Bertramus, with imprint "Printed for White & Co. Horace's Head Fleet Street June 1. 1809." The second map has same imprint but is signed "Neele sc. Strand." "De situ Britanniae" has a separate half-title page. Printed footnotes. Heavily annotated by Thomas Leman (1751-1826) and apparently his own copy. Plate of E. Wyatt Edgell. Leaf of manuscript notes inserted between pp. 148-149, was removed and is available at Manuscript 431 at Special Collections Department (Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University). Translated by Henry Hatcher. The commentary is by Thomas Leman (British Museum catalogue). "De situ Britanniae", by Charles Bertram, was a forgery claimed by him to have been copied from a Latin manuscript written by the fourteenth-century monk ‘Richard of Cirencester,’ in which he described his itinerary through Britain. Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.