COURT JESTER CHAPBOOK The Second Book of the Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan who was Commonly Called the King’s Fool

Seemingly unrecorded Newcastle chapbook cum jestbook of the exploits of the Scottish scholar and Latinist George Buchanan who was mistakenly cast in popular culture as James I’s jester or court fool. This chapbook and the incomplete likely ‘First Book’ of Buchanan’s exploits that precedes it forms part of an elaborate popular libel upon the memory of a major Renaissance scholar. Much reprinted in Edinburgh, Falkirk and Newcastle around the end of the 18th century, the exploits of Buchanan in these imprints resemble but don’t match any known imprint.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: The chapbook is the third - and only fully complete - chapbook stitched into a homemade booklet. Brown paper wrapper with stab sewing.

1. The History of The invasion of Egypt.... from Sir Ralph Abercrombie, pp 16, lacking lower half of title page - does not match any known imprint, though resembling OCLC: 316596400, printed in Stirling, 1801. This is a heavily dog-earred and worn stab-sewn text

2. [Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan] title page missing; pp3-24 - may be the ‘First Book’ that precedes the ‘Second Book’ and therefore an unrecorded pair to:

3. The Second Book of the Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan who was Commonly Called the King’s Fool, ND but c1790-1800, Newcastle ‘Printed in this Present Year’, pp16. Woodcut to title page; text browned but complete - much the best condition of the three chapbooks.

PROVENANCE Acquired privately having descended in the family of Cockshutt of Farsley near Leeds.