FOXE~S B OOK OF MARTYRS AND THE H iST ORY OF THE B OOK

JOHN FOXE'S ACTS AND MONUMENTS Of These Latter and Perilous Days, a vast collection of unforgettable accounts of religious persecution and related documents, centers on the experience of more than three hundred people who were burnt alive for their religious beliefs in sixteenth-century England. Hereafter I refer to this martyrological history as the Book ofMartyrs, because this was the title in common use among booksellers and readers. Foxe oversaw expansion of his martyrological history from about 55,000 words in its initial Latin installment to about three million words in the fourth vernacular edition publi shed by the master printer, John Day. At three and one-half times the length of the Bible, the fourth edition is the most physically imposing and complex English book of its era. Ordinary people read chained copies side by side with the Bible at cathedrals, guild halls, schools, and man y parish churches. Serving as a window into Early Modern English cultural history, this sensational book came to exert a greater influence upon the consciousness of Renaissance England than any oth er book aside from the English Bible and Book of Common Prayer.I In recounting the bibliographical history of a book that epitomizes th e histo ry of the book in Early Modern Britain , this essay engages in what D. F. McKenzie has term ed the "sociology of texts" ("Book" 5). By focusing on issues concerning book format, layout, typography, and other material elements, we may understand how the physical makeup of edition after edition is inseparable from the reception of their shifting textual contents. Scrutiny of typography is particularly important because early printers and readers associated different type founts and typefaces with particular categorie s of texts and styles of reading. Contrary to the common assumption that printers engage