Edward Topsell
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Edward Topsell (c. 1572 –1625) was an English cleric and author best remembered for his bestiary.
Topsell attended Christ's College, Cambridge, earned his B.A. and probably an M.A. as well, before beginning a career in the Church of England. He served as the first rector of East Hoathly, and subsequently became the perpetual curate of St. Botolph's in Aldersgate (1604). He was the author of books on religious and moral themes, including The Reward of Religion (1596) and Time's Lamentation (1599), among others.
Topsell's The History of Four-footed Beasts (1607) and The History of Serpents (1608), both published by William Jaggard, were reprinted together as The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents in 1658. An eleven-hundred-page treatise on zoology, Topsell's work repeats ancient and fantastic legends about actual animals as well as reports of mythical animals. Topsell, not a naturalist himself, relied on earlier authorities, most notably the Historia Animalium of the Swiss scholar Conrad Gessner. "I would not have the Reader," Topsell writes, "... imagine I have ... related all that is ever said of these Beasts, but only [what] is said by many."[1]
Topsell's work is remembered chiefly for its detailed and vigorous illustrations, including the famous image known as Dürer's Rhinoceros. The illustrations have been widely reproduced in many contexts, and Topsell's bestiary has been reprinted in various modern editions, usually in greatly reduced form.
Superstitions about actual animals
Topsell, repeating ancient legends, assigns exotic attributes to actual animals. He writes, for example, that:
- Weasels give birth through their ears.
- Lemmings graze in the clouds.
- Elephants worship the sun and the moon and become pregnant by chewing on mandrake.
- Apes are terrified of snails.
Of the procreation of mice, Topsell writes that it "is not only by copulation, but also nature worketh wonderfully in ingenduring them by earth."[2]
Fantastic animals
Relying on the authority of "sundry learned men," Topsell includes the Gorgon, the Sphinx, the Lamia, the Winged Dragon and the Unicorn.
