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notes
The only discussions of New Year's gift books known to me are those of H. W. Garrod, "Erasmus and His English Patrons," The Library, 5th series, IV (1949-50), 1-13; and H. S. Bennett, English Books & Readers, 1475-1557 (1952), pp. 48-50. See also my Professional Writer in Elizabethan England (1959), pp. 222-225.
Balladmongers, however, issued halfpenny sheets at New Year's for obvious commercial reasons. See Hyder E. Rollins, An Analytical Index to the Ballad-Entries (1557-1709) in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London (1924), nos. 1917, 1919, 1920. See also nos. 793, 1912-16, 1918, 1921, and 2963. Note also W. Fering's broadside ballad, A new yeres Gift, intituled, a Christal glas for all Estates to looke in (1569), STC 10821; and A New Yeeres guift for shews (1620), quoted by Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (1935), p. 498.
The anonymous author of this work had issued a similar "Protest" in 1575: ". . . at Christmas was twelue month, this author put forth a bill tearmed, The second new yeeres gift, and this whole yeer the Papists haue stand printed (at Iohn Alldes stall in the Pultrie) with their finger in a hole without making answere" (sig. [A2v]).
Although the preface was apparently composed on 23 January 1583, the work itself is dated at the conclusion, "From my fathers in Walden the 6. of December. 1582." Evidently Harvey added topical material, possibly the prediction for the year 1583, while the book was in the press. This is the pamphlet which both Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe were to abuse in the 1590s.
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