BERNERS, BARNES or BERNES, JULIANA (b. 1388?), English writer on hawking and hunting, is said to have been prioress of Sopwell nunnery near St. Albans, and daughter of Sir James Berners, who was beheaded in 1388. The only docu mentary evidence regarding her, however, is the statement at the end of her treatise on hunting in the Boke of St. Albans, "Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes in her boke of huntyng" (edition of 1486), and the name is changed by Wynkyn de Worde to "dame Julyans Bernes." There is no such person to be found in the pedigree of the Berners family, and there is a gap in the records of the priory of Sopwell between 1430 and 1480.
The first and rarest edition was printed in 1486 by an unknown schoolmaster at St. Albans. Wynkyn de Worde's edition (folio 1496) was adorned by three woodcuts and included a "Treatyse of fysshynge wyth an Angle," not contained in the St. Albans edition. It contains three treatises, on hawking, hunting, and heraldry. That on heraldry is derived mainly from a work (1441) by Nicholas Upton, and those on hawking and hunting mainly from an early 14th century work on Venerie de Twety.
J. Haslewood, who published a facsimile of the edition of Wynkyn de Worde (181I, folio), with a biographical and biblio graphical notice, examined the author's claims. He assigned to her little else in the Boke except part of the treatise on hawking and the section on hunting. An older form of the treatise on fishing was edited in 1883 by T. Satchell from a ms. in possession of Mr. A. Denison. A facsimile, entitled The Book of St. Albans, with an introduction by William Blades, appeared in 1881. Dur ing the i6th century the work was very popular, and was many times reprinted.