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Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Meredith Hinze, who first alerted me to this edition of Topsell in the Rare Books Collection of the Baillieu Library, to the Baillieu Rare Books librarian, Susan Millard, for her suggestions, and to Anna Welch, curator of Rare Books at State Library Victoria, who alerted me to the 1658 copy of Topsell held in the SLV and who saved me from several errors. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers for their suggestions.
Supplemental data
Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2022.2075610
Notes
1 Conrad Gessner, Guillaume Rondelet, Pierre Belon, Historiae animalium, lib. I–IIII (Zurich: Chrisoph. Frochoverum, 1551–58). The woodcuts of the Historiae animalium were also published separately as Icones animalium in 1553 and 1560, and the Icones avium in 1550 and 1560; a fifth volume on serpents, Qui est de serpentium natura ex variis schedis et collectianeis ejusdem, was published after Gessner’s death (Zurich: J. Carroum, 1587). For Gessner’s biography see Hans Wellisch, ‘Conrad Gessner: A Bio-Bibliography’, Journal of the Society of the Bibliography of Natural History 7 (1975): 151–247. For a discussion of the Historiae animalium, see, among many others, Laurent Pinon, ‘Conrad Gessner and the Historical Depth of Renaissance Natural History’, in Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe, ed. Gianna Pomata and Nancy Siraisi (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2005), 241–67. For his images, see in particular Sachiko Kusukawa, ‘The Sources of Gessner’s Pictures for the Historia animalium’, Annals of Science 67, no. 3 (2010): 303–28; see also Florike Egmond and Sachiko Kusukawa, ‘Circulation of Images and Graphic Practices in Renaissance Natural History: The Example of Conrad Gessner’, Gesnerus 73, no. 1 (2016): 29–72.
2 Edward Topsell, The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes: Describing the True and Lively Figure of Every Beast […] Collected out of All the Volumes of Conradus Gesner, and All Other Writers to This Present Day (London: William Jaggard, 1607); and The Historie of Serpents; or The Seconde Booke of Living Creatures (London: William Jaggard, 1608).
3 Edward Topsell, The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents: Describing at Large Their True and Lively Figure, […] Whereunto Is Added The Theater of Insects; or, Lesser Living Creatures, as, Bees, Flies, Caterpillars, Spiders, Worms, ect., a Most Elaborate Work by T. Muffet (London: G. Sawbridge, T. Williams and T. Johnson, 1658 [printed by E. Cotes]). A copy of this 1658 edition is held in State Library Victoria, RARESF 598.12 T62.
4 See for example Gordon L. Miller, ‘The Fowls of Heaven and the Fate of the Earth: Assessing the Early Modern Revolution in Natural History’, Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 9, no. 1 (2005): 57–81; James J. Bono, The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine, vol. 1 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), especially 183; and Helen Parish, ‘“Every Living Beast Being a Word, Every Kind Being a Sentence”: Animals and Religion in Reformation Europe’, Religions 10, no. 7 (2019): 421.
5 Robert King Merton, ‘Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth Century England’, Osiris 4 (1938): 360–632, and Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth Century England (New York: Harper and Row, 1970).
6 See, among others, Steven Shapin, ‘Understanding the Merton Thesis’, Isis 79 (1988): 594–605; Peter M. Hess, ‘Natural History’, in Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, ed. Gary B. Ferngren (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 195–207; Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform 1626–1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975); Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Gordon L. Miller, ‘Beasts of the New Jerusalem: John Johnston’s Natural History and the Launching of Millenarian Pedagogy in the Seventeenth Century’, History of Science 46, no. 2 (2008): 203–43; and Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
7 The University of Melbourne, Rare Books Collection, Alfred Hart Bequest, 1950, SpC/RB 8CT/15.
8 I am grateful to Anna Welch and Richard Overell for advice as to the probable dating of the cover.
9 Prefatory material, unpaginated.
10 See for instance MS/01453/001 ‘Vestry minute book 1601–52’, and also MS 01454/101–102 ‘Churchwardens accounts 1608–11 and Parish apprenticeship indentures 1604–47’. I am grateful to Andrew Lott at the London Metropolitan Archives for locating these signatures for me, and to Christian Algar at the British Library for searching for other possible signatures.
11 Sidney Lee, ‘Edward Topsell’, in Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), 1904, citing Richard Newcourt, Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinese (London: B. Motte, 1710), i. 916; George Leyden Hennessy, Novum Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinese (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898), 105. This DNB entry was superseded by that of G. Lewis, 23 January 2004, revised 3 January 2008. See also Virgil B. Heltzel, ‘Some New Light on Edward Topsell’, Huntington Library Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1938): 199–202.
12 The two DNB essays differ on his date of death. Lee’s date of 1638 used the incorrect date that a successor to the curacy was made. Lewis’s date of 1625 is that most often repeated by others. Clare Jackson, the Women’s Worker at St Botolph’s, kindly searched for his tomb without success and provided a list of rectors and perpetual curates for the relevant years.
13 The Revvard of Religion: Deliuered in Sundrie Lectures vpon the Booke of Ruth, Wherein the Godly May See Their Daily and Outwarde Tryals, with the Presence of God to Assist Them, and His Mercies to Recompence Them … (London: printed by John Windet, 1596, 1597, 1601; further edition, London: printed by W. Stansby, 1613).
14 Published in London by E. Bollifant for G. Potter. Second edition printed by W. Stansby for N. Butter in 1613.
15 [London]: printed [by W. Iaggard] for Henry Rockyt, ‘and are to be sold at his shop in the Poultry, vnder the Diall, 1610’.
16 Topsell, dedicatory preface, unpaginated. Version accessed from the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Early English Books Online, https://www.proquest.com/books/historie-foure-footed-beastes-describing-true/docview/2240889773/se-2?accountid=12372.
17 Emphasis mine.
18 Ibid.
19 ‘The First Epistle of Doct. Conradvs Gesnervs before his History of Foure-footed-Beastes, concerning the vtility of this Story’, in ibid., unpaginated.
20 Conrad Gessner, Bibliotheca universalis (Zürich: Christoph Froschauer, 1545), an annotated listing of some 12,000 works in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew by 3,000 authors.
21 Topsell, ‘Letter to the Learned Reader’, unpaginated.
22 Charles E. Raven, English Naturalists from Neckam to Ray: A Study of the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947), 167, 218, 223–26.
23 Topsell, Beastes, 190.
24 Gessner, lib. I, 953. Because their images are printed from Dürer’s original, which faces right, Gessner’s and Topsell’s both face left.
25 Topsell, Beastes, 594.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 596.
29 The Orpheus mosaic at Santa Elisabetta in Perugia was first uncovered in 1875 and fully excavated in 1925–26. The first professional excavations at Villa Romana del Casale were made by Paolo Orsi in 1929, followed by Giuseppe Cultrera in 1935–39 and Gino Vinicio Gentili between 1950 and 1960.
30 Catherine Kovesi, ‘Gigi Bon, the Rhinoceros, Venice, and the Unbearable Heaviness of Being’, Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption 8, no. 1 (2021): 15–17. The precise date of this mosaic is unknown. Hermann Walter, in his ‘Per datare il Rinoceronte nel pavimento musivo della Basilica di S. Marco in Venezia’, Studi umanistici piceni 23 (2003): 253–60, argues for a date no earlier than the mid-nineteenth century. However, the eighteenth-century pen and ink drawing of the mosaic floor by Antonio Visentini (now in the Procuratoria di San Marco) on which he bases his argument has since been shown to have several sections that were filled in inaccurately.
31 Topsell, Beastes, 597.
32 As to why African rhinoceroses were not obtainable for Europeans in the early modern period, see Glynis Ridley, Clara’s Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 4–6.
33 Marco Polo (Rustichello da Pisa), The Travels, Book 3:9.
34 For the descriptions of Ganda made in Lisbon, see T.H. Clarke, The Rhinoceros from Dürer to Stubbs: 1515–1799 (London: Sotheby’s Publications, 1986),16–27.
35 Ridley, Clara’s Grand Tour, 86.
36 Ibid., 87.
37 Luís de Matos, ‘Forma e natura e costumi del rinoceronte’, Boletin internacional de bibliografia Luso-Brasileira I (1960): 390, n. 196.
38 Jim Monson, ‘The Source for the Rhinoceros’, Print Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2004): 50–53.
39 Hans Burgkmair, Rhinoceros, 1515, woodcut, 22.4 x 31.7 cm. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, inv. no. 1934/123.
40 For the longevity and influence of Dürer’s image, see Clarke, Rhinoceros, esp. Chapter 1; F.J. Cole, ‘The History of Albrecht Dürer’s Rhinoceros in Zoological Literature’, in Science, Medicine and History: Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice, Written in Honour of Charles Singer, ed. E. Ashworth Underwood (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 337–56; Stephanie Leitch, ‘Dürer’s Rhinoceros Underway: The Epistemology of the Copy in the Early Modern Print’, in The Power of the Image in Northern European Art, 1400–1700: Essays in Honour of Larry Silver, ed. Debra Taylor Cashion, Henry Luttikhuizen, and Ashley D. West (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2017), 241–255; and Andrea Bubenik, Reframing Albrecht Dürer: The Appropriation of Art, 1528–1700 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 100–103. Dürer’s image also influenced Salvador Dali’s sculptures Rhinoceros Cosmique (1950) and Rhinoceros Habille en Dentelles (1956).
41 Kusukawa, ‘Sources of Gessner’s Pictures’, 311.
42 Leitch, ‘Dürer’s Rhinoceros Underway’, 244–47; Larry Silver, ‘Cultures and Curiosity’, in Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence: The Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on the History of Art, ed. Jaynie Anderson (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2008), 243; and Peter Parshall, ‘Imago Contrafacta: Images and Facts in the Northern Renaissance’, Art History 16, no. 4 (1993): 554–79.
43 Ridley, Clara’s Grand Tour, 88–90.
44 Paolo Giovio, Dialogo dell’impresse militari et amorosi (Venice: appresso Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1557). For the illustration see the 1559 edition, 49.
45 Marco Masseti, ‘Sculptures of Mammals in the Grotta degli Animali of the Villa Medici di Castello, Florence, Italy: A Stone Menagerie’, Archives of Natural History 35, no. 1 (2008): 100–104.
46 Juan de Arphe y Villafañe, Varia conmensuracion la escultura y arquitectura (Seville: 1585–87), Book 3, De los animales de quatro pies, ‘El Rinoceronte’.
47 Leitch, ‘Dürer’s Rhinoceros Underway’, 242; Susan Dackerman, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Art Museums, 2011); Sachiko Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature: Image, Text, and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011); Katherine Acheson, ‘Gesner, Topsell, and the Purposes of Pictures in Early Modern Natural Histories’, in Printed Images in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Interpretation, ed. Michael Hunter (Farnham, UK and Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2010), 127–44.
48 Eucherius, Instructionem ad Salunium libri duo. Leber 2, caput 12: de bestii, in J-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus Latinae (Paris: Garnier, 1865), vol. 50: 773–826.
49 Topsell, 597. Emphasis mine.
50 Silver, ‘Cultures and Curiosity’, 244; Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, eds, The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Master of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 174–94; Peter Parshall, ‘Art and Curiosity in Northern Europe’, Word and Image 11 (1995): 352–72; Edward Peters, ‘The Desire to Know the Secrets of the World’, Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001): 593–610; Barbara Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Enquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Marjorie Swann, Curiosities and Texts: The Culture of Collecting in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); R.J.W. Evans and Alexander Marr, eds, Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007); and Paula Findlen, ‘Inventing Nature: Commerce, Art and Science in Early Modern Cabinets of Curiosities’, in Merchants & Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, ed. Paula Findlen and Pamela H. Smith (New York: Routledge, 2002), 297–323.
51 Topsell, Beastes, ‘An Epilogue to the Readers’.
52 Ibid.