The Shippe of Safegarde (1569) by Barnabe Googe

Existing in only three copies, the 1569 publication of Googe's The Shippe is his only work (apart from his translations) that has never been reprinted or edited in a readable modern text. Freed from its illegible black-letter and set with numbered stanzas, explanatory notes, and a scholarly introduction, it will serve as a companion to Judith Kennedy's critical edition of Googe's Eclogues, Epitaphs and Sonnets (Toronto, 1989). This volume contains the prose dedication, the "fourteener"-verse introductory address to the reader, two narrative versifications of miraculous events taken from a Latin redaction of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, and the long title poem (219 ottava rima stanzas). This small collection by Googe, a kinsman of Sir William Cecil and a literary leader in the 1560s and 1570s, represents a subtle embodiment of Reformation values and beliefs that he sought to convey to his Roman Catholic dedicatees and to readers in general, and offers a compendium of Renaissance iconography. Students of Spenser will find it of particular interest.