First edition of some of the works of the celebrated theologian and author Joseph Hall, published four years after his death containing many as yet unpublished including two important pieces of autobiography, many of his unpublished sermons on a multitude of subjects, and several controversial writings. The two autobiographical works are Observations of some Specialities of Divine Providence In the Life of Jos. Hall, Bishop of Norwich and his tract Hard Measure which details the severe treatment to which himself and other prelates were subjected under Parliament during Charles reign. Hall is responsible for initiating several literary genres. In his own day, he was acknowledged as a leader of literary fashion . Tom Fleming Kinloch describes him as a pioneer in more than one branch of literature. Hall has been regarded by scholars mainly as a master of satire. John Milton criticised Hall s writings [but] despite Milton s criticism there have been many voices praising Hall s contributions to English literature. Arnold Davenport quotes Pope, who found Hall s satirical works to be amongst the best poetry and authentic satire in the English language. Damrau The Reception of English Puritan Literature in Germany. Several folio editions of his works were published by the bishop in his lifetime, in 1621, 1625, and 1634. The preface of the first folio has an extravagant laudation of King James, reprinted in the folio of 1634. A small quarto, with a collection of posthumous pieces called The Shaking of the Olive Tree, was published in 1660; in 1662 a more complete collection of the bishop s works. DNB. Joseph Hall (1574-1656), Bishop of Norwich, poet, moralist, satirist, controversialist (against Milton, i.a.), devotional writer, theological commentator, autobiographer and practical essayist, was one of the leading hommes de lettres of the Jacobean age. He was at the centre of public life under James I representing him at the Synod of Dort in 1618, assisting in his negotiations with the Scots and in Lord Doncaster s French embassy and was foremost among the defenders of the temporal and spiritual powers of the Bishops in the Puritan Parliament of 1640-41. However, it is as a writer that Hall is now remembered. Fuller called him the English Seneca for his pure, plain, and full style . While Hall may not have been the first English satirist, as he claimed, he certainly introduced the Juvenalian satire into English.
