Special Collections
Book of the Month, June 2007
The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes
Edward Topsell
London: Printed by W. Jaggard, 1607
[D.-L.L.] Q[Topsell] fol.
The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes, 400 years old this year, is perhaps the best-known work of clergyman Edward Topsell (1572-1625). In 757 folio pages, it is an encyclopaedic description of the real and mythological animals known to Elizabethans, arranged alphabetically from the antelope to the zibeth cat, combining early modern zoological knowledge with mediaeval lore. Topsell based both text and illustrations heavily on Conrad Gesner’s Historia Animalium (1551-87), the most voluminous and scientific zoological treatise of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe. Topsell freely acknowledges his debt to Gesner, and one of Topsell’s achievements was to make Gesner’s Latin work accessible to English readers. But as a compiler, Topsell drew in numerous other writers of various nationalities, listed in the preliminary matter. These range from the Bible and classical writers to such relatively recent English sources as John Caius on dogs (1576), Thomas Blundeville and Gervase Markham on horses (writing 1561-1609 and 1593-1607 respectively) and Thomas Moffett on insects (1634).
Topsell’s sub-title is: “Describing the true and lively figure of every beast, with a discourse of their severall names, conditions, kindes, vertues (both naturall and medicinall) countries of their breed, their love and hate to mankinde, and the wonderfull worke of God in their creation, preservation and destruction”. This points to the avowed aims of his work, to entertain, inform and edify, using created work to praise the Creator. The animal treated most extensively is the horse (pp. 281-435), in a description containing much practical farriery (with an extra ten pages for the unicorn, p. 711-721). Unsurprisingly, the description of the lamia, on the other hand, comprises primarily classical stories about them and various definitions (according to Topsell, the lamia is a wild beast with a female face and breasts. Lamias move swiftly, hiss like dragons, and by the beauty of their breasts entice men to them and then slay them; they also kill their own children.
As a work of natural history, The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes was soon superseded in knowledge and form, ignored by the naturalist John Ray in his zoological writings. Perhaps for this reason, it was rarely reprinted: a new edition came out in 1658, published together with Topsell’s Historie of Serpents, following which there have merely been a twentieth-century facsimile edition (1973) and some collections of extracts, also from the twentieth century. Yet it remains of interest in showing the methods, substance and variety of natural history of Shakespeare’s day. The Senate House Library copy is one of several early editions of Shakespearean sources from the Durning-Lawrence Library.
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