About Puckrel Publishing
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Puckrel Publishing is a brand new independent publisher based in Brighton (U.K.), created with the intention of publishing cheap, modern, scholarly editions of rare old texts, primarily from the Early Modern period. All works will include an introduction, explanatory notes, a bibliography, and any other scholarly apparatus deemed necessary for a full appreciation of the text in question. Our intent is to widen access to and hopefully appreciation of, primary materials, doing so in traditional book form, and with all possible accompanying scholarly resources. To do so as cheaply as possible is a fundamental principle, and because of our use of digital printing technology, our titles need never be out of print.
Our current remit is a series of the works of the English demonologists, which, perhaps due to the relative restraint of English witchcraft, have not received the same notice as their illustrious continental counterparts. The exception in this series is a reprint of Lambert Daneau's Dialogue of Witches, which, although not by an Englishman, was the first tract on the subject of witchcraft in English, and hence is especially relevant to a study of English demonology. A knowledge of thought concerning witchcraft is essential to any study of the thought of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and hence it is our project to make more widely available the texts on the subject which came from English presses.
Our editions will primarily be historical editions, that is, critical reprints of particular editions, usually the first, rather than attempts to construct an 'ideal' edition; although major variants will be noted. This is essentially because our editions are aimed foremost at achieving a more complete historical understanding, and thus the editions which had whatever impact they did at the time are considered to be most apt for study. Sometimes spelling may be modernised; decisions regarding this are taken separately for each edition.
From the OED:
Forms: puckerel, puckrel. [< PUCK n.1 + -REL suffix, after e.g. COCKEREL n.]
A little puck or demon; an imp.
c1580 J. JEFFERE Bugbears III. iii, in Archiv f. das Studium der Neueren Sprachen (1897), Puckes, puckerels, hob howlard, bygorn and Robin Good-felow. 1593 G. GIFFORD Dialogue Witches sig. Bi, Shee had threé or foure imps, some call them puckrels, one like a gray catte, an other like a weasell.'
CF., for example, the character Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600). This entry is Gifford's only citation in the OED.
About the Puckrel logo
Our logo is a woodcut device used
by various printers during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. It was used by John Windet (and was first discovered
by us) on George Gifford's Dialogue Concerning Witches and
Witchcrafts (1593). Somewhat spookily, it was also used by
William Brome, on what was originally to be the second text
(partially) reprinted by us, Reginald Scot's Discoverie of
Witchcraft (1594). It was used by several other printers as
well, notably Valentine Simms on the 1600 quarto of Shakespeare's
The Second Part of Henry IV, and (by this time in a
rather more shabby state) by Augustine Mathewes on John Marston's
Workes (1633). Whether it was the same block used, or
whether there were several copies in circulation, has yet to be
determined; though there are similarities in the wear of the
block in all these usages..
It represents - we believe - a door knocker, and hence
figuratively, appearing as it does on title pages, that the title
page is the 'door' to the work. The somewhat odd exception to
this is that in Scot's Discoverie, Brome printed the
device, along with his colophon, at the very end of the work. The
face in the centre appears to be, purely speculatively, a
spiritual being, and hence this is why, as well as its connection
with our very first text, it is used as our logo.