Marrin's Bookshop

Item Description

8vo. 8.25 x 5.5 inches. xvii + [i] + 310 pp. Bound in original quarter buff cloth, gilt, over green boards. in unclipped pictorial dust wrapper, with edge wear and chips at head and tail of spine, which is sunned. Extremities a little worn, flyleaves partly browned and light foxing of page edges and a few lower margins of first few pages; otherwise a very good copy. Illustrated by frontispiece. Decorated by title page vignette and by publisher's device on verso of title. Account of the life of a sixteenth century Sussex manor and its squire. Fussell calls this Woodward's work a 'historical reconstruction,' as it is based on the works of Leonard Mascall (c.1546-1605), who had lived at Plumpton Place and published three books on agriculture (grafting, poultry and cattle, 1572-c.1600, and later editions). Woodward also uses the work of Charles Estienne, L'Agriculture et Maison Rustique (1570), which influenced Mascall. (Donald McDonald, Agricultural Writers, 1908, 27-46 and Fussell, The Old English Farming Books, 1523-1730, 1947, 9-11).