Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem

This volume deals with the interrelation between English and Dutch culture as it emerged in the field of the emblem and the emblem book in the 16th and 17th centuries. The book consists of 14 articles, by a wide range of specialists, each of whom addresses a different aspect of the subject. The traffic of emblems was mostly from the Low Countries to England. The first printed English emblem book, by Geffrey Whitney, was printed in Leiden in 1586; one of the last English emblem books to be published in the 17th century, by Philip Ayres (1683) came from the Dutch love emblem traditions (Heinsius, Vaenius et al). The reasons for this one-way traffic were manifold, one reason being that the best engravers and printers were to be found in the Low Countries. The Church of England also accommodated adaptations of the highly-popular continental Jesuit emblem books of the early 17th century.