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Re-Forming George Herbert: The Digital Temple and the New Complete Works

"The Digital Temple" and "George Herbert: Complete Works" present, respectively, Herbert’s poetic masterpiece in a richly-encoded born-digital edition, and all of his works in three authoritative Oxford Text print volumes with public-access digital complement.

Published onFeb 21, 2022
Re-Forming George Herbert: The Digital Temple and the New Complete Works
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“There is in love a sweetnesse readie penn’d: / Copie out onely that, and save expense.” “Jordan” 2, ll. 17-18.

Frontispiece of George Herbert.

Herbert outsold Shakespeare in their day; was loved by both Royalists and Puritans; inspired Emerson, Dickinson, Eliot, and Bishop; got quoted in American Graffiti; and was the namesake, more or less, of at least one president, George Herbert Walker Bush.

Description

A most visual poet, Herbert is famed for The Temple's startling variety of stanza forms and for “shaped verse,” in which the poem images the content. As a priest he sought to re-form the relationship between poetry and devotion—re-inhabiting medieval structures of sacred architecture and liturgy with a deeply felt Protestant faith, while redeeming a love of image for the reformed religion of the Word. Our digital project provides powerful ways of re-forming the reading of Herbert himself: The Digital Temple presents the earliest mss. and print witnesses in parallel display; and the richly encoded digital complement to our OUP Complete Works captures his entire oeuvre as a searchable archive.

Funded by four NEH grants and published by UVaP and OUP, The Digital Temple and George Herbert: Complete Works present, respectively, Herbert’s poetic masterpiece in a richly-encoded born-digital edition, and all of his works in three authoritative Oxford Text print volumes with public-access digital complement. This opens Herbert for new generations.

“Thy Word is all, if we could spell.”  “The Flower,” l. 21.

Title, Memoriae Matris Sacrum (1627), Herbert mourns his mother in Latin.

The title page of Memoriae Matris Sacrum (1627).

The title page of Memoriae Matris Sacrum (1627), Herbert’s elegiac Latin and Greek series devoted to his mother, Magdalen Newport Herbert Danvers, published with Donne’s funeral sermon.

Manuscript of “Easter-wings,” one of his best-known shaped poems, c. 1628.

The earliest manuscript copy of “Easter-wings,” one of his best-known “shaped poems.”

The earliest manuscript copy of “Easter-wings,” one of his best-known “shaped poems,” with the poet’s corrections to the scribal copy in his own hand, from the Williams MS., c. 1628. Note that the shape suggests both larks’ and butterflies wings, that the stanzas are narrowest at the words “most poore” and “most thinn,” and that the repeated title headers suggest two poems, “Easter-wings” I and II.

Manuscript of “Triumphus Mortis” (“Death’s Triumph”), from Lucus, c. 1628.

The manuscript copy of “Triumphus Mortis” (“Death’s Triumph”) from Lucus (The Sacred Grove).

The manuscript copy of “Triumphus Mortis” (“Death’s Triumph”) from Lucus (The Sacred Grove), Herbert’s Latin lyric collection on diverse topics. “Triumphus Mortis” is a satiric epyllion (brief epic) and resembles in its ironic intensity Raphael Hythloday’s critique of imperial warfare’s staggering costs in the first book of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), and from H.’s own day in Samuel Daniel’s unpublished verse “Epistle to Prince Henry” (1609-1610), which took a strong stance against an expansionist “British Empire.” This copy is in Herbert’s own hand, and is included in the Williams MS., c. 1628.

Manuscript from Passio Discerpta (The Passion Torn to Pieces), c. 1628.

The manuscript copy of “In Arund. Spin. Genuflex. Purpur.”

The manuscript copy of “In Arund. Spin. Genuflex. Purpur.” (“On the Reed, the Thorns, the Kneeling, the Purple”) and “In Alapas” (“On the Slaps”) from Passio Discerpta (The Passion Torn to Pieces), Herbert’s Latin lyric sequence on Christ’s sufferings. Both poems reflect on the Roman soldiers’ mockery and humiliation of Jesus. This copy is in Herbert’s own hand, and is included in the Williams MS., c. 1628.

Manuscript of Herbert’s will (1632), over his own signature, dying of tuberculosis.

The manuscript copy of Herbert’s will from 1632.

The manuscript copy of Herbert’s will from 1632, over his own signature, as he was dying of “consumption” (tuberculosis) distributing his goods and funds to his wife Jane Danvers Herbert, to his two surviving Vaughan nieces who lived with them, to a few friends and servants, and to Leighton Bromswold Church near Cambridge.

Title, The Temple’s 1633 first edition, first of 13 before 1709.

The title page of The Temple’s 1633 Cambridge first edition.

The title page of The Temple’s 1633 Cambridge first edition, the first of 13 through 1709—nearly all slender, pocket-sized duodecimos with convenient alphabetical indices of poems—making Herbert one of the best-selling of poets of the 17th Century.

From The Temple’s 1st ed., “The Altar” shaped like an altar and letter “I.”

“The Altar” from From The Temple’s 1633 first edition.

From The Temple’s 1633 first edition, “The Altar” opens the section called “The Church,” and is the first of his "shaped" poems—formed like an ancient Hebrew stone sacrificial altar, but also, significantly, like the capital letter “I.” For Herbert’s “Altar” is “made of a heart, and cemented with teares,” as the poet offers up his poem and his book and himself for divine service—followed immediately by a poem about Christ’s offering of himself, “The Sacrifice.” 

The title page of The Treatise of Temperance and Sobriety (1634).


The title page of The Treatise of Temperance and Sobriety (1634), Herbert’s translation of the Jesuit Leonard Lessius’s 1613 Latin version of Luigi Cornaro’s Trattato de la vita sobria (1558)—a tract recommending a moderate diet as the key to health and long life. Ironically, Herbert was dead of tuberculosis before he could see this translation into print.

Title, 110 Considerations of John Valdesso (1638), with Herbert's notes.

The title page of The Hundred and Ten Considerations of Signior John Valdesso (1638).

The title page of The Hundred and Ten Considerations of Signior John Valdesso (1638), an English translation of Spanish humanist Juan de Valdés’s 16th-Century Ciento y Diez Consideraciones, to which Herbert, at the request of his friend Nicholas Ferrar, had added twenty explanatory notes often praising and sometimes finding fault with the Roman Catholic reformer. It is the closest thing that we have to a theological treatise from Herbert, one of the most famous religious writers in English.

Title, Outlandish Proverbs (1640), Herbert’s collection of foreign sayings.

The title page of Outlandish Proverbs (1640).

The title page of Outlandish Proverbs (1640), Herbert’s collection and translation of over a thousand proverbs from French, Italian, Spanish, and German sources—all “outlandish” in being foreign, and yet valued by the patriotic Herbert as wisdom from abroad. A major influence on Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanacs from 18th-Century colonial America, Herbert’s own “Book of Proverbs” has given many famous phrases to our language, including #1 “MAN Proposeth, God disposeth,” #524 “Living well is the best revenge,” and #747 “Gods Mill grinds slow, but sure.”

“Astrologie is true, but the astrologers cannot finde it.” Outlandish Proverbs #641.

Title, Jacula Prudentum (1651), which adds 161 foreign proverbs to 1640 OP.

The title page of Jacula Prudentum (“Wise Outbursts”) (1651).

The title page of Jacula Prudentum (“Wise Outbursts”) (1651), which adds 161 other foreign proverbs to Herbert’s “outlandish” 1640 collection, capitalizing on the popularity of the by now best-selling “Mr George Herbert,” even in the Puritan era of Oliver Cromwell after the execution of King Charles I in 1649.



Title, Herbert’s Remains (1652), containing further prose works.

The title page of Herbert’s Remains (1652).

The title page of Herbert’s Remains (1652), containing further prose works left unpublished at Herbert’s death nineteen years earlier—further evidence that even as Herbert’s Church of England went into temporary eclipse and exile, he remained widely read in Puritan England. 



Title, The Countrey Parson (1652), Herbert’s posthumous pastoral manual.

The title page of A Priest to the Temple, or, The Countrey Parson (1652).

The title page of A Priest to the Temple, or, The Countrey Parson (1652), Herbert’s posthumous prose masterpiece and the first pastoral manual in English. Published by those who hoped to revive the Prayer Book forms and worship of the recently abolished early Stuart Church of England, The Countrey Parson nevertheless was popular and influential among Presbyterian and Independent Puritan clergy, and remains a touchstone for pastoral ministry today.


Musae Responsoriae (Muses’ Reply) (1662), dedications to King and Prince.

The dedications page of Musae Responsoriae (The Muses’ Reply) (1662).

The dedications page of Musae Responsoriae (The Muses’ Reply) (1662), Herbert’s collection of Latin epigrams refuting attacks on English worship from Scottish Presbyterian Andrew Melville’s Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoriae (1604). Written in Herbert’s youth but published after the 1660 Restoration of King Charles II and the Church of England, Herbert’s decades-old piece of theological controversy benefited from his continuing posthumous poetic fame. Here we see his dedications to King James I (“Jacobo”) and to his son Charles, then Prince of Wales (“Carolo”). 

Title, Herbert’s Letters (1670), a collection of surviving correspondence.

The title page of Herbert’s Letters (1670).

The title page of Herbert’s Letters (1670), publishing the few pieces of correspondence that survived from Herbert’s time, and accompanying Izaak Walton’s famous Life of Herbert. These few letters show the poet in many lights: ambitious young Cambridge scholar and Public Orator; devoted son and stepson, brother, and friend; conscientious priest; and, occasionally, court gossip. 

Project Creator or Project Team Name

Robert Whalen, Project Director/General Editor: Robert Whalen (PhD, Toronto) is Professor of Renaissance Literature at NMU and author of a book and multiple articles on Herbert, Donne, textual scholarship, and digital editing. He has won four NEH Grants, three with Chris Hodgkins.

Christopher Hodgkins, General Editor: Christopher Hodgkins (PhD, U Chicago) is Professor of Renaissance Literature at UNCG. Author or editor of eight books (four on Herbert), he has received four NEH Grants, as well as Mellon and Pew Grants, and is co-founder and Director of the international George Herbert Society.

Institutional affiliation/s

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Northern Michigan University

Years active

2010 to present

Keywords/Tags

George Herbert, Poetry, Metaphysical Poets, Devotional Writing, Renaissance and Reformation Literature, Tudor-Stuart Writers, Born-Digital Editions, Oxford Scholarly Editions, Complete Works, Textual Scholarship

To learn more

The Digital Temple

George Herbert: Complete Works

The Digital Temple is available open-access through March 18, 2022, courtesy the UVA Press. Subscriptions are available from the UVA Press.

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