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25. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments of Matters Most Special and Memorable, Happening in the Church: With an Universal History of the Same, 3 vols, (London, 1684).
Requested on: 30 March 1867.
First published in 1563, this account by John Foxe (d.1587) of the persecution of Christians by Rome was for centuries one of the three most influential titles in the English-speaking world: the King James Bible and Shakespeare being the other two. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (as it was commonly known) was central to the creation of a national identity which saw Britain as separate from, and always under attack by, continental Europe.
Stoker only requested the first of the three volumes, which details the classical and medieval atrocities of Rome against the Godly. Stoker knew Foxe’s Book of Martyrs from his childhood, and probably called up this volume as a rare edition of something with which he had long been familiar.
Citation:
25. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments of Matters Most Special and Memorable, Happening in the Church: With an Universal History of the Same, 3 vols, (London, 1684).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits,
accessed May 5, 2024,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/items/show/517