ONE OF THE CORNERSTALLS OF MODERN THOUGHT: THE UTOPIA OF THOMAS MORE, here in the rare third edition, in a fine collector's copy.

Rare third revised edition (the first printed in Basel) of the famous novel on the "Ideal State" which gave its name to an entire literary genre.

Edited by Erasmus of Rotterdam, to whom More had sent the manuscript in 1516. The second part, on the ideal constitution of a State, was written first, while More was sent to Flanders in 1515, while the first part it was only written in 1516, after his return to England. The two woodcuts by Ambrosius Holbein, Hans' older brother, include the famous bird's eye view of the island of Utopia (a full-page illustration) and the fascinating scene showing the traveler fictional character of the story, Raphael Hythlodaeus, in conversation with More himself and his adversary friend Peter Gilles (Aegidius), while More's young assistant, John Clement (who later becomes a royal doctor and More's son-in-law) approaches them. Like Gulliver's Travels, Utopia was written "as a treatise for the times, to put into practice the lesson of Erasmus; it inveighs against the new statehood of the omnipotent autocracy and the new economy[.], as well as calls for religious tolerance and universal education[.] More had all Swift's gift for thoroughly convincing romanticism: the beginning, when Rafael Hythlodaye recounts his travels, has a liveliness that draws the reader into political theory.[More] he is a saint for Catholics and a predecessor of Marx for communists. His manifesto is and will be obligatory reading for both, and for all shades of opinion in between" (PMM 47, 1516 edition).

The famous utopian allegory of St. Thomas More is also significant in the history of linguistics, for More's creation of a new language for his "no-place", complete with its own alphabet which appears in only four of the sixteenth editions century of the text. While the first edition illustrates the letterforms in an irregular woodcut, Froben had the metal type cut to print More's fantastical alphabet to his exacting standards of typographic design.

"Froben's dazzling display of foreign-script printing in the service of a learned joke is almost never sustained as the slippery Utopia makes its way into the vernacular languages and the uneven landscape of printing across Europe. The alphabet's presence in the early editions emphasizes the connections between humanist philology, the printing of unfamiliar alphabets, and European expansionism" (Fuchs and Palmer).
VD 16, M 6299. Adams M 1756. Panzer VI, 205, 222. Isaac 14177. Heckethorn 100, 90. Bezzel (Erasmusdrucke) 912. Hieronymus 260. Kat. Basel 1960, 343, 341, 120f. Gibson 3. Van der Haeghen III, 41. PMM 47.