[Rarebooks] fa: SIR THOMAS MORE - THE COMMON-WEALTH OF UTOPIA 1639

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, April 29. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y93zryy8

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Sir Thomas More: The Common-wealth of Utopia: Containing a Learned and pleasant Discourse of the best state of a Publike Weale, as it is found in the Government of the new Ile called Utopia. Written by the right Honourable, Sir Thomas Moore, Lord Chancellour of England. London: Printed by B. Alsop & T. Fawcet, and are to be sold by Wil: Sheares, at his shop in Bedford-street in Coven-garden neere the New Exchange, 1639. Later morocco-backed boards, 12mo (14 cm); [4], 288, 279-298, 285-288, 303-305, [1] pp. Lacking the additional engraved title-page, but otherwise complete, conforming to the erratic pagination of the ESTC collation above (with the following additional misnumbered pages not noted by ESTC: pages 46, 47 misnumbered as 44, 45; p. 100 as 110; p. 117 as 116; p. 133 as 109; p. 136 as 112; p. 205 as 181; p. 262 as 226; pp. 286, 287 as 287, 288). Several text leaves have been bound out of order in this copy, but all are present. STC 18098; Pforzheimer 741; ESTC S112890.

Binding rubbed and worn, but sound; front inner hinge cracked but secure; early ink scribble in the margins of the first leaf of the text, one leaf (F5) with upper corner missing, affecting page number but not affecting text (see photo above), intermittent mild toning to the text, last leaf a bit browned, occasional damp-staining and small spots and touches of soiling, but generally very clean and sound, firmly bound. Front paste-down with the signature of John Burns (1858-1943), labor leader, socialist, Liberal MP and cabinet member, and a book collector who specialized in the works of More. Much of his collection ended up at the Senate House Library at the University of London; the remainder, “including major holdings on London history and Thomas More, was auctioned in three sales between December 1943 and April 1944.” Earlier ownership signature of Henry Hewett.

An early edition (the fifth and last) of the first English translation, by Ralph Robinson, first published in 1551. The original, De optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia, first published in Leuven by Erasmus in 1516, was largely written while More was serving as the king’s envoy in Flanders. More refers to this mission on the very first page of the text, praising the man who would send him to the scaffold less than twenty years later: “The most victorious King of England, Henry the eight of that name, in all royall vertues, a Prince most peereless...” A landmark of social satire and a foundation work of imaginative fiction, in 500 years More’s Utopia has rarely, if ever, been out of print.