Item #3006455 De optimo Reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia, libri duo… [and], Moriae Enkomion: Stultitiae laudatio. Sir Thomas MORE, Desiderius ERASMUS.
De optimo Reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia, libri duo… [and], Moriae Enkomion: Stultitiae laudatio.
De optimo Reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia, libri duo… [and], Moriae Enkomion: Stultitiae laudatio.

De optimo Reipublicae statu…
De optimo Reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia, libri duo… [and], Moriae Enkomion: Stultitiae laudatio.

London and Paris: Barbou, 1777.

Duodecimo, with a frontispiece to the first work; contemporary dark green morocco, sides bordered and spine panelled in gilt, all edges gilt.

The Barbou edition of More and Erasmus

The beautifully-printed Barbou edition of Utopia bound, as often, with the matching edition of Erasmus' Praise of Folly.

The beautifully-printed Barbou edition of Utopia bound, as often, with the matching edition of Erasmus' Praise of Folly.

The friendship between Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) and Erasmus (1469-1536) was one of the great scholarly alliances. More's Utopia (1516) was a revolutionary work of philosophy which inaugurated the entire tradition of the modern imaginary voyage, but it was also a book to which a small coterie of his greatest friends contributed, particularly including Erasmus. More also played an important part, in turn, in the writing of Erasmus' Moriae Enkomion – the 'praise of folly' but also a pun on the 'praise of More' – which is said to have been written whilst they were staying at More's London house. It was first published in 1511.

This Barbou edition of both works is particularly attractive. The Barbou family was in business from the early sixteenth-century through to the beginning of the twentieth, and was known in the later 1700s for their superb editions of the Latin and Greek classics (not unlike a French Baskerville).

Bibl. Erasmiana, 111; Brunet, II, 142; Graesse, II, 495; Van der Haeghen, I. 127.

Condition Report: Joints chafed and head of spine slightly chipped.

Price (AUD): $1,250.00

US$814.46   Other currencies

Ref: #3006455

Condition Report