The Authenticity of John Owen’s Twelfth Book of Epigrams

John Owen (1564–1622) was the most widely circulated Anglo-Latin poet of the seventeenth century. Between 1606 and 1612, he published ten books of Latin epigrams. From 1615, a spurious eleventh book, in fact by Michele Verino, was often added. From 1628 an appendix or twelfth book attributed to Owen began to appear. Although this twelfth book has largely been ignored by scholars and excluded from authoritative editions, this article uses surviving manuscripts to demonstrate that twenty-seven of the epigrams are certainly by Owen. This demonstrates the importance of considering manuscript as well as print evidence when attributing authorship of early-modern Latin verse. Owen has usually been treated only as a poet of print. This article is the first full consideration of the role of Owen’s surviving presentation manuscripts, and as such, casts his literary career in a new light.