Heywood (John) The Spider and the life. A parable of the spider and the flie, first edition, by …

[Heywood (John)] The Spider and the Flie. A parable of the spider and the flie, first edition, woodcut initials and tailpieces, woodcut illustrations (44 full-page, including repeats), lacking initial blanks, title, portrait frontispiece, A² (A2 recto supplied in contemporary manuscript facsimile), the Preface, the Table, Introduction, B2, B4, C1, C3&C4, D2, I4, K-L⁴, Aa1, Aavii2, Aavii3, Aavii4, Bbiiii"², 2C1, [left-pointing hand]Ccii"², [par.][double dagger]Eeiii"², ²"[par.][double dagger]"1-3, 2F4, 2K1, 2Q2 & 2Q3, 2S⁴, final blanks, damp-staining spot to 2D3-2Ff, printer's error to Kk4, corner repaired to [par.][double dagger]2, light damp-staining to margins, modern blind-stamped morocco, [Pforzheimer 469; STC 13308], 4to, by Tho[mas] Powell, 1556. sold not subject to return. ⁂ Rare first edition of this early English woodcut work. Standing nearly as long as Milton's Paradise Lost, The Spider and the Fly is an allegorical mock-heroic bestiary in rhyme. It was first printed in 1556 but, according to Heywood's epilogue, was begun nineteen years earlier. The time span between composition and publication may account in part for the generally acknowledge obscurities and inconsistencies of Heywood's political and religious allegory. The poem is allegorical, with spiders standing in for Catholics and flies representing Protestants, yet this strange conceit met with only limited success and so the work was never reprinted, though it was attractively designed and illustrated as noted in Pforzheimer, "...outstanding among English works of the time."