Ian Gadd, Alexandra Gillespie, eds. John Stow (1525-1605) and the Making of the English Past. London: British Library, 2004. xiv + 192 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7123-4864-5.
Reviewed by Robert Tittler (Department of History, Concordia University)
Published on H-Albion (March, 2005)
John Stow Considered
Modern interest in John Stow may fairly be said to have begun with the fully annotated and excellently indexed publication in 1908 of his Survey of London by the Oxford literary scholar Charles L. Kingsford, which remains the standard edition. It has been sustained for the general public until quite recently by the availability of the less-expensive, stripped-down Everyman version edited by H. B. Wheatley, and then by at least two recent soft-cover versions which came into and went out of print all too quickly. The work seems currently available only in a reprinted edition of Kingsford's Stow, Survey (Elibron) which proves difficult to track down. This is not a little ironic, as scholarly interest in John Stow's writings and career has become something of a minor cottage industry in recent years, both on the part of those who use his works as a primary source for their own work on London, and those who take him as their prime subject. Even at that, the Survey is the only one of Stow's many works, including over twenty editions of the Summarye of the Chronicles and Annales alone, which has ever been conveniently and widely available, and this partly accounts for why this most prolific historian of his time is largely known by that work alone.
In addition to making Stow better known, recent consideration by Barrett Beer, Lawrence Manley, Daniel Woolf, Ian Archer, and others has raised several questions germane to both the man and his times. In noting Stow's far greater preoccupation with, e.g., ditches and bridges than with the celebration of Elizabeth or the rise of commercial theater (and by his failure even to mention Shakespeare), the current work employs Stow to balance the conventional perspective of Elizabethan London. The Survey allows us to glimpse it, if not entirely from "below," then at least from half-way down. It encourages us, too, to reconsider questions of religious conformity and nostalgia for the pre-Reformation past, of social stratification, of the decline or perpetuation of traditional charity or civility, of concerns for environmental issues, and of the history of historical thinking and writing at this time. It further challenges the formal canon of humanist trained writers by placing this autodidact ever more firmly in their company. As Patrick Collinson observes in his foreword to the volume before us, Stow may not traditionally have been placed alongside the likes of Polydore Vergil, Thomas More, or William Camden, but it is Stow--the tallow-chandler's son; the only member of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries who was not a gentleman born or trained; and a man who never owned his own horse--who now receives as much or more attention than any of those more canonical contemporaries.
In bringing together their multi-disciplinary team to produce this well-produced and delightfully illustrated volume of succinct and varied essays, Ian Gadd and Alexandra Gillespie have performed valuable service. The work summarizes much of what is familiar, but also expands upon it in myriad and sometimes surprising dimensions. And while not all the tiles in this mosaic prove equal in weight or likely durability, the resulting whole certainly presents a fuller and more rounded view of the man, the totality of his work, and the context in which he worked.
Those who primarily treat the Survey include Anthony Bale's intriguing and scholarly essay on Stow's treatment of London Jews as they appeared both historically and in his own time. Noting Stow's generally favorable allusions to the Jewish experience in London, Bale speculates about Stow's direct printing of several phrases of Hebrew, which he is not known to have understood, as indicating a sympathetic concern for even non-Christian communities who contributed to the City's heritage. Andrew Gordon, A. S. G. Edwards, Oliver Harris, and Gillespie herself further explore Stow's methodology and sources, and assess his place in the historical writing of his time. Gordon's thoughtful contribution considers Stow as a topographer, preferring him to his contemporaries and friends William Lambarde and John Norden as far the better scholar. Gillespie painstakingly reconstructs some of the sources on which Stow depended and which he may have borrowed or possessed: something of a progress report on her larger project of reconstructing Stow's library.
Some of these essays, working somewhat in the shadow of Daniel Woolf's well-known essay on the death of the chronicle, reflect on the world of commercial publishing and the developing market for historical writing as it existed in Stow's time. Alfred Hiatt takes us further in our understanding of Stow's long-standing feud with Richard Grafton. Gadd and Meraud Grant Ferguson join forces to explore the curious story of Stow, Grafton, and the Stationers' Company. Oliver Harris considers Stow in light of the contemporary antiquarian network. Ian Archer traces Stow's progress from a mere chronicler to a more sophisticated and less easily categorized historical writer of his time.
And at least two of the essays present extended reflections on Stow's legacy and use by his successors. Angela Stock adds to what Julia Merritt has recently suggested elsewhere about Anthony Munday's 1618 edition of Stow, with the thought that Munday took a more positive view of current civility than his mentor and friend. And Martha Driver investigates the dissemination of some of Stow's books to the hands of later historians. Several essays explore Stow's editions of other writers: A. S. G. Edwards on Chaucer and other fifteenth-century authors; Derek Pearsall on Stow and Thomas Speght on Chaucer's editors, and Jane Griffiths on Stow's edition of John Skelton.
Like most important works of its type, these essays raise a number of issues just as they resolve others. They particularly invite further study of Stow's chronicles and annals, works which formed the bulk of his life's work and presumably the lion's share of his income, but which are treated more or less in passing here. But this is not to deny by any means this valuable addition to Stow studies. This generous offering, replete with full bibliography and wrapped with a foreword by Collinson and an afterword by Katherine Duncan-Jones, should become well-thumbed by scholars in several fields.
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Citation:
Robert Tittler. Review of Gadd, Ian; Gillespie, Alexandra, eds., John Stow (1525-1605) and the Making of the English Past.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
March, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10263
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