Abraham Fleming: - Early Music Online - Royal Holloway, University ...

with his Georgiks”, which suggests that this was intended to be a single book containing
both the Bucoliks and Georgiks. Both books were quarto in size and printed by Thomas
Orwin to be sold by Woodcocke at his shop The Black Bear in Paul’s Churchyard.
Consequently Bucoliks and Georgiks have been catalogued as one text with the two titles
sharing the same STC number. However, the British Library’s copy (shelfmark C.122.c.13)
reveals a different story. The first 32 pages comprise Bucoliks, well printed with a clear title
page and embellished with woodcuts of a uniform style. Georgiks does not start at page 33 as
one might expect had it followed straight on from Bucoliks, but starts with a new page one.
Georgiks has its own title page and a separate dedication. This book looks as though it was
printed quickly and costs were kept down, although both colophons say that the books were
printed by Orwin. The woodcuts used to illustrate Georgiks are of a different style too and do
not match those used in Bucoliks. This indicates that Fleming’s Georgiks was intended to be
a separate text to Bucoliks and the evidence also suggests that Orwin printed Bucoliks
himself and farmed Georgiks out to a colleague or even to an apprentice. In addition the
Bodleian Library’s copy (shelfmark CC28(3)Jur) has different wording on the title page
making it a variant edition, which led bibliophiles to conclude wrongly that there were two
different editions of the Georgiks. One variant was supposed to have been bound with
Bucoliks and the other variant was available separately. This theory was upheld in the
Peterhouse Biographical Register, which went so far as to suggest that the 1589 Bucoliks,
Georgiks and Bucoliks and Georgiks comprised three distinct texts, despite examples of such
bound copies having separate title pages and being quite obviously different in style. 257 This
thesis demonstrates that there were two books produced in 1589: these were the third
translation of Bucoliks and a brand new translation of Georgiks. Woodcocke’s customers
could purchase one of each title and ask to have them bound as one, in which case there was
a supplementary title page available that could be inserted at the front. Alternatively
customers could just purchase the book that they wanted. However, Fleming’s 1589
Georgiks continues to share an STC number with the Bucoliks and is not counted as a
257 Walker, Peterhouse Biographical Register (1927), p. 290.
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