Selections from Wodrow’s Biographical Collections: Divines of the North-East of Scotland
By Robert Wodrow (1679–1734)
Edited by The Reverend Robert Lippe
Aberdeen: Printed for the New Spalding Club, 1890
A substantial late-Victorian antiquarian volume devoted to the lives of important Scottish Protestant divines and churchmen, drawn from the celebrated manuscript collections of the Scottish ecclesiastical historian Robert Wodrow.
Published for the New Spalding Club of Aberdeen in 1890, this was issued as No. 5 in the Club's publications and was produced in an edition of only 525 copies.
The work is particularly valuable for the history of the Scottish Reformation, Church of Scotland and ecclesiastical history of north-east Scotland. Wodrow's original manuscript collections are preserved in the University of Glasgow Library.
The biographical collections include accounts of:
The volume also contains two portrait plates, including portraits of Bishop Patrick Forbes and Bishop William Forbes, together with extensive notes, appendix and index.
Pagination: lxxxv, 1–360, followed by 12-page New Spalding Club report
Dimensions: approx. 265 × 206 × 50 mm
Weight: approx. 1,709 g
Large original publisher's brown cloth binding, with blind-ruled and decorative borders to the boards, gilt New Spalding Club device to the upper board and gilt-lettered spine.
A pleasing, substantially unrestored-looking example with considerable period character.
The binding shows general age-related wear, rubbing and fading, particularly to the spine and extremities. Corners and spine ends show wear, with some fraying/bumping. The cloth has some surface marks and age-related discolouration.
The text block has uncut/rough-cut edges, as issued, giving the volume a particularly attractive antiquarian appearance. There is age-toning and some spotting/foxing, particularly to the endpapers and margins, as visible in the photographs.
The illustrated portrait plates remain present.
There is an attractive old “Ex Libris Duncan Shaw” ownership label to the front pastedown.
Binding remains intact, though naturally showing its age and front hinge a little weakened.
Please study all photographs carefully as they form an important part of the condition description.
Robert Woodrow was one of the most important early historians of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. His extensive manuscript researches preserved a huge body of biographical and ecclesiastical material concerning the Reformation and post-Reformation Scottish Kirk.
This particular volume concentrates upon ministers and churchmen associated with Aberdeen and north-east Scotland, making it of particular interest to collectors and researchers in Scottish church history, Presbyterianism, the Scottish Reformation, Aberdeen history and genealogy.
Original 1890 New Spalding Club edition — not a modern reprint.
Institutional cataloguing confirms that only 525 copies were printed, making this a genuinely limited scholarly club publication rather than a mass-market Victorian book.