H Edmund Poole (Edited by); Boorde, Andrew The Wisdom of Andrew Boorde. [ Selections from the Dyetary of Helth and the Breuyary of Helth] Edited with an Introduction and Notes by H. Edmund Poole. Illustrated by A.E. Christopherson. LIMITED EDITION OF 550 COPIES [ Garswood Press ] , London: Edgar Backus, 1936.

Limited / Numbered / Signed. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo Inscribed By Author SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY: "Harold & Landa Youngman with all good wishes Christmas, 1936. H Edmund Poole." This book has been designed by 4. E. Christopherson, and printed by Falconer Scott from hand-set Gas/on Old Face type on Windmill mould-made paper. The Edition is limited to 550 numbered copies, of which numbers i to 500 are for sale. This copy is number 47. INTRODUCTION: Andrew Boorde was born about 1490 near Cuckfield in Sussex and was brought up at Oxford. While still under age he was received into that strictest order of monks, the Carthusians, and in 1521 he was appointed Suffragan Bishop of Chichester, although there is no evidence that he acted as such. About 1528, after some twenty years of vegetarianism and fasting with the Carthusians, he wrote to the prior of the Hinton Charter-house in Somerset, complaining that he could no longer endure the "rugorosyte" of the Order, and he was accorded dispensation from his monkish and religious vows. Tiring of England, Boorde had, by 1529 travelled over sea to study medicine and in pursuit of fuller knowledge he visited many European countries-noting with keen eye the customs and manners of the inhabitants of the towns and villages through which he passed-before returning to England in 1530. He established himself as a practitioner and counted among his notable patients the Duke of Norfolk, by whose means Boorde was allowed to wait upon Henry VIII (although there is no recordof the doctor attending the King in a professional capacity). A second continental tour followed, during which-fired by an urgent zeal to "se and to know the trewth of many thynges" and to "have a trewe cognyscyon of the practis of Physycke"- he visited all the best known universities and schools "within the precinct of Chrystendome." By 29th May, 1534, Boorde was back in the London Charterhouse where he took the oath of conformity and where he was kept very closely confined until released by Cromwell (a former patient) who sent the doctor to the principal courts of Europe to report on the feeling that was being aroused on the continent by Henry's general policy. He was taken ill during this mission but on his recovery he returned to England and in 1536 he went to Scotland to practice and study medicine (he mentions a little university or study named Glasco) still writing despatches to Cromwell. Late in 1537 or after the dissolution of the religious houses in 1538, Boorde undertook his longest continental tour, including in his itinerary Calais, Gravelines, Antwerp, Cologne, Worms, and Venice, thence (by ship) to Rhodes, on to Joppa and to Jerusalem, where he visited the Holy Sepulchre; returning via Naples and Rome, across the Alps to settle in Montpellier. Here, by 1542, he had written, among other works, the first printed handbook of Europe, The Breuyary of Helth and The Dyetary of Helth. He is supposed to have settled in Winchester on his return to England, for in 1547 it was proved before the justices of the cathedral city that, although he still kept the Carthusian rules of fasting and wearing a hair shirt, he maintained three loose women in his chamber there for his own use and for the use of other priests. Whether because of this or for some other offence, he is next heard of in the Fleet Prison, London, where he made his will on I I th April, 1549. He must have died soon afterwards, for his will was proved on 25th April, 1549. (Book ref. 126750)  £30.00

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