The Poetical Works of Gavin Douglas - Bishop of Dunkeld

An especially important edition is John Small's four-volume The Poetical Works of Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, with Memoir, Notes, and Glossary, published in Edinburgh by William Paterson in 1874. The first volume contains Small's extensive biographical and bibliographical study together with The Palice of Honour, King Hart and Conscience. Volumes II–IV contain Douglas's Eneados, accompanied by notes, textual variants and a glossary. METS Editions
The importance of this edition lies partly in its attempt to preserve and systematically present Douglas's surviving writings for nineteenth-century scholars. Small examined manuscripts and earlier printed editions and provided the extensive linguistic apparatus necessary for readers unfamiliar with early sixteenth-century Scots.
Douglas's poetry itself is particularly important for demonstrating the sophistication of Middle Scots as a literary language. His Eneados is far more than a mechanical translation of Virgil. Douglas introduced original prologues to the books, some containing vivid descriptions of the Scottish landscape, weather and changing seasons. These passages rank among the finest descriptive poetry of early Scotland.
Consequently, The Poetical Works preserves the writings of a figure who stands at the meeting point of medieval Scottish poetry and Renaissance humanism. Alongside Robert Henryson and William Dunbar, Douglas helped establish Scots as a language capable of expressing classical learning, complex allegory and highly accomplished poetry

Volume I - clxxxi - 154 pp

Volume II - 318 pp

Volume III - 373 pp

Volume IV - 356 pp

Gavin Douglas (c.1474–1522) was one of the greatest of the early Scottish Makars, the group of poets associated with the flowering of Scots literature during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The third son of Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus, known as “Bell-the-Cat”, he was educated at the University of St Andrews and probably continued his studies in Paris. He pursued a career in the Church, becoming Provost of St Giles in Edinburgh and, following a turbulent period of political and ecclesiastical manoeuvring, Bishop of Dunkeld in 1516. Political difficulties eventually forced him into exile in England, where he died of plague in London in 1522.

Douglas's literary reputation rests principally on three works: The Palice of Honour, the allegorical King Hart (although its attribution to Douglas has been questioned), and above all his translation of Virgil's Aeneid, generally known as the Eneados. Completed in 1513, the Eneados was the first complete translation of a major classical work into any Anglic language, making it a landmark not only in Scottish literature but in the wider history of literature in English and Scots.

A fine set of 4 volumes all in mint unread condition.

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