Robert Copland

The first book to which his name is affixed as a printer is The Boke of Justices of Peace (1515), at the sign of the Rose Garland, in Fleet Street, London.

His best known works are The hye way to the Spytell hous, a dialogue in verse between Copland and the porter of St Bartholomew's hospital, containing much information about the vagabonds who found their way there, including thieves' cant; and Jyl of Breyntford's Testament, dismissed in Athenae Oxonienses (ed.

William Copland, the printer, supposed to have been his brother, published three editions of Howleglas, perhaps by Robert, which in any case represent the earliest English version of Till Eulenspiegel.

iii, and by the Grolier Club (1901); the Hye Way in William Carew Hazlitt's Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, vol.

See further the Forewords to Frederick James Furnivall's reprint of Jyl of Breyntford (for private circulation, 1871) and John Payne Collier, Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language, vol.