Poly-Olbion ... colouring-in books ...

Poly-Olbion is a topographic poem depicting the counties in England and Wales, written by Michael Drayton (1563 – 1631) and revealed in 1612, with a reprint in 1622.

A part of Cornwall – displaying
St Michael’s Mount and the Scilly Isles

Drayton was an English poet, specialising in historic poetry, who got here to prominence within the Elizabethan period. Each poem was anthropomorphised … then delivered to inventive life by William Gap, a talented engraver, who died in 1624 (his d.o.b.) is unsure.

Poly-Olbion got here to my discover (someway) as colouring books– so guess who needed to examine…

Drayton had adopted the idea of celebrating all of the factors of topographical or antiquarian curiosity in his homeland …

Title web page of Poly-Olbion –
as engraved on copper
plate by William Gap
in 1624

Albion’s Superb Ile – ‘Of Albion’s superb Ile – I write.’ – Drayton’s used the rhetorical system of prosopopoeia all through his song-poems.

As I did not perceive it – for elucidation: to remind me and allow you to know … prosopopoeia is when (on this case) an summary factor is personified …

River Severn – displaying south Wales, with
the English of St George on the pennant,
on the alternative shore

England within the 1500s had only a few roads, when the rivers had been an necessary and mythologised pure characteristic – which the poem eulogises …

A part of the blurb ‘as we transfer from place to position: a unprecedented textual repository of English and Welsh historical past, topography, legends, wildlife and traditions is amassed’.

Presumably depicting Boudica – Queen of
the Iceni tribe – which resided in
Norfolk, by the town of Norwich

Each topic possible is taken into account: Roman builders, English saints, the birds of Arden Forest, Dutch settlers, the nice sheep of the Cotswolds, falconry, Robin Hood, sea monsters, Druidry, civil wars, natural cures.

Fairly actually – that is much more than my mind carries! – it has been boggling at these songs/ poems …

Nicely I feel maybe I would higher simply get to why I am penning this publish … after I was out in Canada I got here throughout adults’ colouring artwork pages … however fairly actually they did not do something for me …

Cowl for one of many volumes

Then these colouring books appeared and I used to be entranced – whether or not I really sit and color them in is one other matter – being considerably incompetent in that space …

Who’d have thought the artwork of colouring was standard throughout the 17^th century and past – when most of the unique monochrome copies of those maps can be hand-coloured by each newbie {and professional} colourists.

Exhibiting a colored model
from earlier instances – that is
a part of Worcestershire

For those who really feel one other publish may improve this one so as to add a bit extra data – then I will give it a go subsequent time …

Just a few hyperlinks: The College of Exeter’s takes you to the others, with some explanatory particulars set out … significantly related are that the workshops had been delivered for youngsters, with Particular Schooling Wants, primarily within the South-West area of England … the Royal Geographical Society was additionally concerned.