The generall historie of the Turkes, from the first beginning of that nation to the rising of the Othoman familie: with all the notable expeditions of the Christian princes against them. Together with the liues and conquests of the Othoman kings and emperours faithfullie collected out of the- best histories, both auntient and moderne, and digested into one continuat historie vntill this present yeare 1603: by Richard Knolles. London : Printed by Adam Islip, 1603. STC 15051.

Collation: Folio.  A-5G⁶ 5H⁸.
Pagination: [12], 1152, [40] p. : ill., ports. (copper-plate engravings).

Background and Content

Richard Knolles (late 1540s-1610) was born in Northamptonshire. He received both his BA and his MA from Lincoln College, Oxford in 1565 and 1570 respectively.  Shortly after receiving his MA Knolles left Oxford to become Master of the Free School at Sandwich in Kent, a school that had been founded by Sir Roger Manwood (1525-92), the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer.  The Manwoods, both Richard and his son Peter, seem to have provided patronage for Knolles from the 1570s onwards.  Indeed, Knolles dedicated his translation of Jean Bodin’s De Republica to Peter Manwood, published in London as The Six Bookes of a Commonweale (1606). While  Knolles would translate Camden’s Brittania into English, the work was never printed.  The surviving manuscript remains at the British Library.

When exactly Knolles began work on his most ambitious scholarly achievement The Historie of the Turkes is difficult to ascertain.  The first folio edition appeared in 1603.  James VI of Scotland became James I of England in March of that year following the death of Elizabeth I.  Knolles took adavntage of the dynastic transition by dedicating the work to “the High and Mightie Prince James”.

Knolles’ Historie is based heavily on a range of sixteenth-century printed chronicles and reports. It is, therefore, essentially a synthesis of other works, but a carefully crafted synthesis produced in English.  Nothing of this scale and detail had appeared before, in English, on the Ottomans, and it would be another fifty years before a subsequent work in English would become the authority on the subject. Despite this fact, both Samuel Jonson and Lord Byron turned to Knolles centuries later, and both alluded to the richness of his prose style. William Shakespeare, moreover, likely used Knolles’ work (and possibly an earlier manuscript version) as a source for his Othello (ca. 1603-1604).

The CRRS copy shown here was printed by Adam Islip in 1603, as was the expanded edition of 1610 of which the CRRS also has a copy.  There are several other Islip books, mainly large folios, in the CRRS collection.

Binding and Provenance

For details, see the images above.

Bibliography

V.J. Parry, Richard Knolles’ History of the Turks. Ed. Salih Ozbaran. Istanbul, The Economic and Social History Foundation of Turkey, 2003.

Christine Woodhead, “Richard Knolles”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online. (ODNB).

The ESTC records 32 surviving copies (the CRRS’s copy has not been included in that census).