Digitized Books

Topic: Digitized Books

Purpose and Source-Control Position

This is a curated access map, not an evidence packet in its own right. It identifies the three resources preserved on the Neville Research wiki's Digitized Books page, gives each a precise bibliographical identity, and routes interpretation to the packet that actually evaluates the source.

The hub should remain separate from top books and articles. Its narrower purpose is useful: it records public digital witnesses, copy-specific features, file sizes, identifiers, and the evidentiary limits of each link.

1. Florio's Montaigne, 1603

Exact edition

• Michel de Montaigne, The Essayes, or, Morall, politike and millitarie discourses.
• Translated by John Florio.
• London: Valentine Simmes for Edward Blount, 1603.
• STC 18041.
• ESTC S111839.
• Folger catalogue record: STC 18041.

The Folger record confirms that this is the first English translation, in three books, with separate dated title pages for Books 2 and 3. It also distinguishes multiple Folger copies and their annotations rather than treating the 1603 Montaigne as a single undifferentiated object.

Public digital witness named by the wiki

• Internet Archive identifier: `MontaigneImages`.
• Archive.org title: Essayes, tr. John Florio (London, 1603).
• Full scan: Montaigne.pdf, approximately 203 MB.
• Downloaded locally for this pass: OCR text, metadata XML, and scan-structure XML. The full PDF was not duplicated locally because this packet is an access map and the stable public scan is exceptionally large.

The item metadata describes the copy as bearing extensive seventeenth-century pen, pencil, and red-crayon marks, a manuscript index, and corrections attributed to Florio. Those are copy-specific uploader assertions. The scan makes the marks observable, but the attribution of any correction as Florio's holograph requires a scholarly copy-census or handwriting authority before it is used as fact.

Safe use

• Cite the edition through STC/ESTC and the Folger record.
• Cite the Internet Archive identifier when referring to this specific annotated copy.
• Do not treat this copy's marginalia as Neville's, Shakespeare's, or Florio's without separate attribution evidence.

2. Tacitus, Annales and Germania, 1612

Exact edition

• Tacitus, The Annales of Cornelius Tacitus. The Description of Germanie.
• London: Arnold Hatfield for John Norton, 1612.
• STC 23646.
• ESTC S117625.
• Folger catalogue: record 167083.

The edition combines two translation histories:

• the Annales and Description of Germanie, with the dedication to Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, signed by Richard Greneway;
• The End of Nero and Beginning of Galba, in Henry Savile's translation, with a separate title page and described as the fourth edition.

The scan's title and dedication pages directly show the 1612 date and Greneway's address to Essex. The dedication begins:

“The worthinesse of this Authour well knowen vnto your Honour, putteth mee in some hope of pardon for my presumption.”

Public digital witness named by the wiki

• Internet Archive identifier: `TheAnnalesOfCorneliusTheDescriptionOfGermanie`.
• Source institution named in the item metadata: Salina Public Library, Kansas.
• Full image PDF: approximately 1.4 GB.
• Searchable text PDF: approximately 151 MB.
• OCR text: approximately 1.7 MB.
• Downloaded locally for this pass: OCR text, metadata XML, and scan-structure XML; the very large image PDF was not duplicated.

Important correction

The locally indexed EarlyPrint item A13333 is the 1598 first English Annales, not this 1612 edition. It cannot serve as a page or textual control for copy-specific claims about the wiki's 1612 scan. The common Tacitus/Savile textual tradition is relevant, but the editions must remain distinct.

Interpretive use belongs in audley end tacitus and henry neville.

3. Saint-Omer First Folio Article

Wiki link identified

The wiki's Article on Nevill First Folio is:

• Line Cottegnies and Gisèle Venet, “More Mysteries about the Saint-Omer Folio: Nevill and other Marks of Ownership,” Études Épistémè 27 (2015).
• Open-access HTML.
• DOI.

The page is not the final state of the research. Its authorial warning says it represents a “non-definitive position” and directs readers to a corrected and expanded 2016 article on the P S stamp:

• Line Cottegnies and Rémy Cordonnier, “New Discoveries about the Saint-Omer Folio: The Signification of the P S Stamp,” Études Épistémè 29 (2016). Article. DOI.

The controlling later synthesis is:

• Line Cottegnies, “The Saint-Omer Folio in its Library,” Cahiers Élisabéthains 93.1 (2017), pp. 13–32. Article record. DOI.

The 2015 article safely established only that the Folio appeared in the 1823 manuscript catalogue and that Jesuit provenance was probable rather than absolutely proven at that stage. The later research associates the Folio with a 1736 Thomas Nevill gift group and a Prefect of Studies reserve. Full analysis belongs in saint omer folio and thomas nevill.

4. Resource Table

5. Local Research Assets

The dated source directory contains:

• Montaigne OCR, Archive.org metadata, and scan map;
• Tacitus OCR, Archive.org metadata, and scan map;
• the extracted text of the complete 2017 Cottegnies PDF;
• a research log explaining why the two exceptionally large full scans were not duplicated.

See RECEPTION ACCESS CLUSTER SOURCE PASS 2026 07 09.

6. Quoted Source Passages

The principal direct quotation in this access hub is Richard Greneway's 1612 Essex dedication opening, transcribed in section 2 from the Archive.org witness. The Saint-Omer article's authorial warning and the Montaigne/Tacitus edition statements are routed to their public records rather than re-quoted at length.

7. Notes on Access and Citation Rules

1. Cite the bibliographical edition and the digitized copy separately.
2. Use STC/ESTC records for edition identity; use Archive.org identifiers for the particular scan.
3. Treat Archive.org OCR as a navigation layer, not a quotation authority where page images are available.
4. Route interpretive claims to the dedicated topic packet rather than citing this access map as proof.
5. When an online article identifies itself as preliminary or corrected, cite the later controlling study.

8. Original Wiki Record

• “Digitized Books.” Henry Neville Research Wiki, 29 March 2021, archived project URL. Local preservation: wiki digitized books.

The wiki page was valuable as a discovery list. This packet now supplies the source identities and hierarchy needed to use those links responsibly.