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In George Sandys: a Bibliographical Catalogue of Printed Editions in England to 1700 (New York Public Library 1950), Professor Fredson Bowers and I mentioned that Mr. F. S. Ferguson had located a 1622 edition of The First Five Bookes of Ovids Metamorphosis by George Sandys. No details were at the time available. In 1954 I examined the book in the Library of Winchester College and arranged to have a microfilm made for further study.[1] A brief examination showed that the date was 1623 instead of 1622. Further investigation proves that the interesting little volume is not a reissue of the 1621 edition but a complete resetting.

Before going into details, however, we should consider some general facts about the author and this particular work. George Sandys' translation of the whole fifteen books of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1626, rev. ed. 1632) is in its major part (i.e., more than half the books) the first poetry written in English in the New World.[2] But before Sandys came to Virginia in 1621 he had translated the first five books.[3] And in that year, before or after he sailed, appeared a second edition of this first one-third of the Ovid.

The 1621 edition was described by J. Haslewood in 1808,[4] but until 1947 even the copy he examined had disappeared from view, and there was even some doubt that it had ever existed.[5] In the latter year, however, Dr. James G. McManaway of the Folger Shakespeare Library was able to secure for his institution a copy of this "elusive little book." He describes it in detail in an article published in 1948.[6] In 1950 in George Sandys: a Bibliographical Catalogue

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appeared a bibliographical descriptive summary of this copy. Both these considerations point out that at least two questions remain concerning the little book: 1) what and where was the first edition? 2) was there originally in the 1621 Folger copy the "head of Ovid in an oval, with verses beneath, as in the folios," as described by Haslewood? The first question remains unanswered. But in the 1623 edition we have an answer to the second. And a consideration of the 1623 brings up other interesting matters.

The Winchester Ovid is bound in old, probably contemporary vellum. Facing the engraved titlepage and conjugate with it is the missing head of Ovid with engraved verses beneath, with the head facing left, in the opposite direction from what it does in the 1626 (first complete) edition. The engraved titlepage reads: THE | First Five Bookes | of | Ovids Metamorphosis | edit 3d. | Imprinted for W: B: | 1623

The engraved page is certainly the same as that used in 1621. Whether the "edit 3d." and "1623" are workings over of "edit 2d." and "1621" or whether they are reengravings after obliterations is more doubtful.

The collation differs somewhat from that of 1621 (see Sandys: A Bibliographical Catalogue, p. 26) and perhaps should be considered next:

12°: [fold, two leaves, engraved tp and Ovid's head], a 6 (—a1) A-F12 (original F12 perhaps missing and replaced by blank leaf with stub bound before F1)[7], 77 leaves (counting the present F12 leaf but not the engraved fold), pp. [10] 1-8 6 10-141 142-144; $5(—a4, 5) signed. (Note: p. 1 is signed here, though in 1621 this is doubtful.)

In their Contents the two editions are identical with the exceptions noted below. The five books begin respectively at A1, B2v, C6v, D8, and E11, each headed like Bk. I except for appropriate number and argument, as in 1621.

Actually there is entirely satisfactory evidence that the whole of the 1623 edition is a page-for-page resetting of the 1621 (or possibly an earlier first) edition. Punctuation, catchwords, and capitalization are among the many indications.

Thus we have evidence that while the poet was completing his translation in the Virginia colony during the hours snatched from night and repose, the first five books was reset and republished in London. Like Michael Drayton, who had encouraged Sandys to go on with the work,[8] the publisher felt that here was something the public would read. Perhaps the appearance of at least three editions of the first five books before he returned to London in 1625 impelled Sandys to the almost immediate publication of the whole, without taking time for the polishing of the couplets and for the commentaries he was to add later.[9] This apparently hurried publication may have been partially motivated

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by the author's confidence in the book's salability but probably partially to get it back into his own hands again. For in 1626 Sandys secured from Charles I a license for the exclusive rights to the complete edition for twenty-one years.[10]