This volume belongs to the critical edition of the complete works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an edition that presents the works in broadly chronological order and in accordance with the
principles of modern textual scholarship. This volume contains critical editions of five varied works Bacon composed during the 1620s. The most significant and substantial of these five works
is his biography of Henry VII (The historie of the raigne of King Henry the seventh) but the volume testifies as well to Bacon's continuing robust allegiance to his youthful vaunt that
all knowledge was his province, for it also includes his sketch for a biography of Henry VIII, An advertisement touching an holy war (a thoughtful debate over the prospect of holy war
in his own time), Apophthegmes (a lively collection of witty anecdotes, classical to early modern), and his select verse translations from the psalms. In each case an authoritative
text has been established based upon fresh collation of the relevant manuscripts and of multiple copies of the seventeenth-century editions, and subjected to a thorough bibliographical analysis
of the treatment of Bacon's texts in the early modern printing-house. The Introductions discuss the occasion and context for each work, evaluate his creative transmutation of his sources, and
weigh their contemporary reception. A comprehensive commentary identifies and parses Bacon's use of source material, from his refinement of published literary and historical sources and
contemporary MSS to the political white papers composed while he served as counsellor to King James. An extensive glossary is integrated into this commentary. An Appendix provides full
bibliographical descriptions of all of the textual witnesses, manuscript and printed edition.
