[ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS]. Moriae Encomium: or, a Panegyrick Upon Folly. Done Into English, and Illustrated With Above Fifty Curious Cuts, Design'd and Drawn by Hans Holbeine. To Which is Prefix'd, Erasmus's Epistle to Sir Thomas More and an Account of Hans Holbeine's Pictures… London: Printed, and Sold by J. Woodward, 1709.
FIRST ENGLISH EDITION ILLUSTRATED BY HANS HOLBEIN. Leather-bound; hardcover; octavo (19.5 x 12 x 2 cm); pp. [24], xvi, viii, [12], 171. English text (translated from the original Latin). Bound in handsome 19th-century tree calf; six panelled spine with sun devices; gilt borders to boards; marbled endpapers; full-page frontispiece and 46 further engravings; printed side-notes. Provenance: Bookplate to the front pastedown inscribed to ‘Mark Cooper; the gift of Mrs Wilson in memory of [printed] Frederick Charles Wilson who died March 1851 at 82’ - probably the time of this binding. Condition: VERY GOOD. Collated complete. Binding secure, the outer hinges renewed, inner hinges relaid. The text-block largely very well-preserved, a little offsetting of the frontispiece and a few leaves with trivial marginal stains, else excellent.
Notes: The beautiful 1709 illustrated edition of “In Praise of Folly” by Erasmus, hailed by many as “the father of 18th-century rationalism” (PMM); this being the first English edition to be illustrated with woodcuts by Hans Holbein, the engravings by John Sturt which derive from a series of drawings made in the margins of a copy of the Basel 1514 edition. The text is prefaced by ‘Erasmus’s Epistle to Sir Thomas More, and ‘A Catalogue of the Paintings of Hans Holbein’. Erasmus first conceived of the work in 1509, and it was written as a satirical attack on the Western Church. He later revised and expanded it during a visit with Sir Thomas More, with the title "Moriae Encomium, In Praise of More In Praise of Folly." The book became one of the most popular works of the Renaissance and Erasmus' sharp critique of the practices of the Church played a role in the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation. A lovely copy of a key text for the Northern Humanist movement.
