The lost editio princeps of Anthony Munday’s Palmerin of England , found

A copy of Anthony Munday’s Palmerin of England in two separate volumes is preserved in the Old Library of Christ’s College, Cambridge, with the shelfmark Rouse 17.3-4, and is identified in the online catalogue as belonging to the 1639 edition. The first volume, however, lacks preliminary leaves and contains typographical and bibliographical evidence suggesting that it is from a different edition. This article shows that the first volume in the Christ’s College copy actually belongs to an unrecorded edition of this Iberian book of chivalry printed before 1596. The decorative initials used throughout this volume are associated with the printer John Charlewood, who obtained a licence to print the romance in February 1581. It is argued that in 1581 Charlewood printed the edition to which the first volume in Christ’s College belongs and that this copy represents the only extant witness of the editio princeps of Munday’s Palmerin of England .