‘Ed: Agberowe’, Seventeenth-Century Collector of Restoration Playbooks

Abstract

Abstract A number of seventeenth-century books-almost exclusively Restoration playbooks-bear the ownership inscription ‘Ed: Agberowe’ on their title pages (and often a second signature on a subsequent page). This article provides an overview of the books known to have been in Agberowe’s collection and supplies a brief biographical sketch, revealing some impressive literary connections to Butler, Milton, and Marvell. Recovery of Agberowe’s life and library has intrinsic interest in terms of his colourful biography and his literary tastes, which, it is suggested, may have developed in relation to his employment throughout the 1660s and via the family of his wife, Theophila Cornewall. Perhaps more significant, though, is that the recovery of Agberowe’s story provides a new example of a seventeenth-century book-collector who seems to have been interested primarily in acquiring playbooks.