HOTSON, J. Leslie. The Death of Christopher Marlowe.
London: The Nonesuch Press / Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925.
£ 150
FIRST EDITION: 8vo. 76 pp. Cancel title page, T-page with foldout frontispiece; 4 full page plates; appendix and notes. Pages slightly yellowed, otherwise in excellent condition; no marks or foxing; untrimmed. Original brown buckram; small ink stain on bottom board; spine with gilt lettering. An excellent copy.
The present volume contains the first publication of original documents, discovered at the Public Record Office, connected with the death of Marlowe. The author Dr Leslie J. Hotson was a scholar of Elizabethan literary puzzles at Harvard University who discovered the identity of Ingram Frizer, the man who killed of Christopher Marlowe. This work — which made his name is his first major work. He stumbled across the evidence related to Marlowe’s killing while decoding Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale in the archives of the English Public Records Office in 1923–24.