Master Weaver

London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Very Good/Very Good. 1980. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo 0710006411 Dust jacket complete, unclipped, small closed tear. Original cloth covered boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. 214 pages clean and tight. Based on facts preserved in the business records of the Blanket Makers of \Vitney, or passed down through the generations by word of mouth, .Master Weaver is a sequel to Richard Early's previous book, Apprentice (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), and continues the story of Thomas Early (five times great-grandfather of the author), who was apprenticed to the trade of blanket-making at Witney in 1669. This novel tells of Thomas Early's rapid progress as a Master Weaver, leading to the presentation of a pair of gold-fringed Witney Blankets to James 11 in 1687, and the gracious bestowal by Queen Anne of a Royal Charter upon the Blanket Makers of the town in 1711. It also describes his romance and subsequent marriage to Winifred \Vild of Swindon. He died in 1733, leaving his widow and son to continue his life's work, as do his descendants today. the company Charles Early and Marriott (Witney) Limited. Blanket-making has centred on the town of Witney for something like a thousand years, and Richard Early has been able to draw on very full records about the trade and the people concerned in it. Having spent all his life in the textile industry, he is well able to recount the life of his seventeenth-century ancestor with genuine and sympathetic understanding, accurate historical detail, and with the vivid imagination of a `master storyteller'. .