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Equipped with a commission from Henry VIII, John Leland began to
record the contents of English monastic libraries in 1533 before
they were dispersed. His booklists were compiled as the primary
resources for his comprehensive dictionary of British writers in
four books, entitled De uiris illustribus. This remarkable
testament to medieval and early modern habits of book collecting,
but also to history and national identity, lay incomplete at
Leland's death. The sole extant witness to the author's ambitious
task is the autograph manuscript, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS
Top. gen. c. 4. Although antiquaries made use of De uiris
illustribus over the next generations it did not see its way into
print until 1709 when Anthony Hall produced a careless edition, a
significant number of passages omitted, under the title Commentarii
de scriptoribus Britannicis. Hall's text has formed the basis for
subsequent scholarship. This new edition is based on a thorough
examination of the autograph, supplemented with readings from John
Bale's epitome, now Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.7.15 (753).
True to Leland's original text, this new edition shows how
unreliable and misleading Hall's was in many respects. It includes
a complete English translation, published on facing pages
accompanying the Latin text. The translation seeks to capture
Leland's own excitement with his project and also to convey his
shifts in interpretation during the process of revision: the text
mirrors in miniature the stages of the English reformation under
Henry VIII. The extensive introduction provides a full history of
the manuscript, examines sources, and shows the relationship of the
text to Leland's booklists and other contemporary documents.
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