The work for which Stow is best known is his Survey of London, published in 1598, not only interesting for the quaint simplicity of its style and its amusing descriptions and anecdotes, but of unique value for its minute account of the buildings, social condition and customs of London in the time of Elizabeth I. A second edition appeared in his lifetime in 1603, a third with additions by Anthony Munday in 1618, a fourth by Munday and Dyson in 1633, a fifth with interpolated amendments by John Strype in 1720, and a sixth by the same editor in 1754. The edition of 1798 was reprinted, edited by W.J. Thorns, in 1842, in 1846, and with illustrations in 1876. Through the patronage of Archbishop Matthew Parker, Stow was able to print the Flores historiarum of Matthew of Westminster in 1567, the Chronicle of Matthew Paris in 1571, and the Historia brevis of Thomas Walsingham in 1574. In the Chronicle of England 1590 John Stow writes, "To The Honorable Sir John Hart, Lord Maior, The Chronicle written before that nothing is perfect the first time, and that it is incident to mankinde to erre and slip sometimes, but the point of fantatical fooles to preserve and continue in their errors."
At the request of Parker he had compiled a "farre larger volume," a history of Britain, but circumstances were unfavourable to its publication and the manuscript was lost. Additions to the previously published works of Chaucer were twice made through Stow's "own painful labours" in the edition of 1561, referred to above, and also in 1597. A number of Stow's manuscripts are in the Harley Collection in the British Museum. Some are in the Lambeth library (No. 306); and from the volume which includes them were published by the Camden Society, edited by James Gairdner, Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, with Historical Memoranda by John Stowe the Antiquary, and Contemporary Notes of Occurrences written by him (1880).
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