| This seventeenth-century Basle edition of Erasmus' Praise
of Folly, a great Renaissance satire that is also a
playful tribute to Erasmus' English friend, Thomas More ("the praise of folly"; "the praise of More"), reproduces Hans Holbein's sixteenth-century illustrations. Very unusually, it prints many of them separately from the book and then pastes them into it (other illustrations have been printed more normally alongside, although separately from, the letterpress). The chemistry of the glue used to paste in the illustrations has harmed the paper of most copies of this book. |
