Hi Peter,
I'm not following you. The folio edition of The Faerie Queene was produced
first in 1609; from 1611 this was expanded to include the complete Works.
Thereafter Mother Hubberds Tale was added (1613), and each of the texts
was reprinted as stocks of it ran out, so that complete volumes might
continue to be made up and bound for customers wanting to buy the works.
The four-sheet gathering of eight leaves containing A letter of the
Authors... and the dedicatory and commendatory sonnets, signed ¶, was
printed first in 1611 (i.e. not with the original folio edition of FQ in
1609!), and bound with the complete works from that date. When stocks ran
out in 1617, it was printed again, pretty much exactly the same as before
(almost definitely set from a copy of the 1611 printing). Johnson notes
that stocks of the title page sheet probably ran out at about the same
time in 1617, and that this and the ¶ gathering were reprinted more or
less together.
andrew
Andrew Zurcher
Tutor and Director of Studies in English
Queens' College
Cambridge CB3 9ET
United Kingdom
+44 1223 335 572
hast hast post hast for lyfe
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