ERASMUS, Desiderius (c.1466–1536). Das Theur und kunstlich Buchlin Morie Encomion. Translated by Sebastian Franck, with other texts by Franck. [Ulm: Hans Varnier, 1534].

First German edition. Rare, only one copy recorded at auction. The most well-known of Erasmus's works, In Praise of Folly is a biting satire which criticizes all human professions, from monks and theologians to grammarians, poets, and rhetoricians like himself. Erasmus's inversions and doubles entendres begin with the title, playing with the name of his friend and host Thomas More, in whose London house he wrote the book, and continue by having a personified Folly tell the tale, so that Folly ridicules folly. Erasmus followed classical models of ironical eulogies by Isocrates, Lucian and Seneca, in its composition, and infused it with Christian Platonism.

This translation is by the German humanist and freethinker Sebastian Franck (1499–1542), whose sympathies with “heretics” led to his imprisonment in Strasbourg in 1531 and subsequent expulsion from that city. In 1534 he settled in Ulm, and published the present work. This edition is augmented with Franck's translation of Agrippa's De vanitate and two of his own works. It is one of two published in the same year, and the Bibliotheca Belgica gives it priority. The other edition consists of 170 leaves and has the printer's device with his name on it at the end. Bibl. Belgica II. pp.923-4, E 968 and 969, the former being the present work; not in Adams.

Quarto (198 × 141mm). Title-page in red and blank (toned, spotting and dampstains largely in first and final quires). Later half sheep over marbled boards, covers ruled in blind, spine tooled in blind (rubbed, corners bumped, head of spine chipped, hole at head of lower cover though to pasteboard). Provenance: Christian Godfried Jahn (1690–1748; bookplate) – H. ?Rutland (18th/19th-century inscription on pastedown; “R” embossed on title-page).

The binding description of this lot has been changed.