BEST-SELLERS

This list includes all the Elizabethan books (excluding Bibles, textbooks, and translations) that went through three or more editions in the decade immediately following their first appearance. It also includes all books first published 1559–1603 that went through three editions in any decade after their first appearance, books whose numerated editions indicate that they went through more editions than presently exist, and books whose early editions (usually recorded in the Stationers' Register) are lost but whose popularity is universally accepted. All the exceptional works have been marked with an asterisk (*).

Foxe's Acts and Monuments, whose first three editions spanned thirteen years, is included because it was made available in churches, cathedrals and the halls of merchant companies (see Chapter 9).

The works of Henry Smith and William Perkins were best-sellers individually and in collections. To avoid double counting, I have ‘counted’ only their collected works in the total of 189 works; but I have listed their popular sermons separately here, so that the reader can assess the independent popularity of each work if he wishes to.

Entries appear as they are listed in the revised edition of the STC, but I have not included material that is of purely bibliographical interest.