Kalender of Shepardes

The Kalender of Shepherdes is a compendium of miscellaneous texts including a perpetual calendar, popular astrology, folk medicine and didactic texts on vices and virtues, a vision of hell, and prayers and expositions on elementary catechismal matters, which enjoyed repeated publication in sixteenth-century England. It was first put together by a Parisan printer Guy Marchant, with the title Le Compost et kalendrier des bergiers, who published several editions. The market for this miscellany was soon expanded outside France. In 1503 Antoine Verard published the English translation as The kalendayr of the shyppars (STC 22407) in Paris. Verard’s publication was soon followed by various editions issued in England, in which some changes in text and illustration were introduced. Richard Pynson published in total three editions, in 1506 (STC 22408), c. 1510 (STC 22409.3), and c. 1517 (STC 22409.7); De Worde printed editions in 1508 (now lost), 1511 (STC 22409.5), 1516 (STC 22409), and 1528 (STC 22411); Julian Notary issued an edition around 1518 (STC 22410), which was followed by William Powell’s two editions in 1556 and in 1559 (STC 22412; for John Wally, STC 22413); three further editions appeared subsequently, Thomas Este’s for John Wally ([1570?], STC 22415) and John Wally’s two editions ([c. 1580], STC 22416; [c. 1585], STC 22416.5). Despite so many editions, and perhaps because of the miscellaneous and pragmatic nature of its content, each edition of the KS has survived in very few copies and it rarely appears on the antiquarian book market. At Christie’s sale in London on 20 November 2002, however, a sixteenth-century copy of the KS in a modern binding was sold from a private collection, and was acquired for Keio University. This was found to be a composite copy consisting of leaves from no less than three different editions; while the majority of the leaves are from Powell’s 1st edition, editions by Thomas Este and Julian Notary appear to provide the remaining leaves.

<description>
Folio. Printed on Paper. 245 x 176mm. Printed in red and black in the calendar section. Numerous woodcut illustrations and borders throughout the text.
Collation: A-N8 = 100 leaves of 104, lacking A1, M7 (text supplied in manuscript), and N7-8. M8 is misbound after N4. Leaves of M5, 6, 8 and N1-6 defective with loss supplied in later manuscript (probably early 19th century).

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			Thomas Este 1570? (STC 22415)
			William Powell 1556 (STC 22412)
			Julian Notary 1518? (STC 22410)
			pen facsimile

In our online edition, this unique copy has been transcribed and edited using XML and is presented here as with the digital facsimile.

<bibliography>
Takami Matsuda and Satoko Tokunaga, “A Composite Copy of the Kalender of Shepherdes in Keio University Library” in Codices Keionenses: Essays on Western Manuscript and Early Printed Books in Keio University Library, ed. by Takami Matsuda (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2005.3), pp.119-208.

 

Features

This website contains the XML encoded transcription and edition of the Kalender of Shepardes, with the following features. Each page can be accessed either by the table of contents (tree menu) or the digital facsimile of thumbnail images that appears at the top of each main page as well as on the menu page.

 

< Main Page> The description of each woodcut image will appear as a tooltip when a cursor is placed above it.

< Pulldown Menu >   Text Transcript 1 : A transcription using standard ASCII characters only. Variant fonts used in the original text, including ‘long s’ and ‘2-shaped r’ and ligatures, are highlighted in blue. Abbreviations are expanded and highlighted in blue. Transcript 2 : A diplomatic transcription displaying all characters as they appear in the original text. You will need to install Alphabetum Unicode font (by Juan Jose Marcos) to view this page properly. Edition 1 : An edited text, retaining the original page layout. Edition 2 : An edited and formatted text. A single XML file can be viewed through 3 different XSLs, to highlight different tags, such as proper names, verse, etc. respectively. Description The table of contents and the Iconclass annotations of woodcuts in the page. Image A high resolution image viewed with a zoomer. Search (under construction) A full-text and image search   Compare text Opens a new window which lets you compare transcriptions and edited texts side by side.

 

People

The original template for this XML edition and website, as well as digital mcrofilm, has been created by Yukie Baba. They have been expanded and updated by Takami Matsuda. Diplomatic transcription and XML encoding are done by Takami Matsuda and Emiko Yamagishi. Editing is by Takami Matsuda and Satoko Tokunaga. The original high resolution digital facsimile has been produced by HUMI Project.