bound by Bayntun Riviere
MORE, Sir Thomas.
The Utopia of Sir Thomas More in Latin from the edition of March 1518, and in English from the first edition of Ralph Robynson's translation in 1551 with additional translations, introduction and notes by J.L. Lupton.
Oxford, At the Clarendon Press, 1895.
The text of this Clarendon Press edition follows the first English translation made by Ralph Robinson (1520-1577) for the private use of his friend, George Tadlow, who was a City haberdasher. A loose rendering, Robinson initially resisted calls for publication before the work was printed in 1551. Nevertheless, his translation is now regarded 'among the treasures of our literature' (Arber) as an imaginative piece of sixteenth-century prose.
The tale begins when More encounters the fictional character Raphael Hythloday, a traveller who has just returned from voyages with Amerigo Vespucci. Hythloday tells More of a distant island called Utopia, where all property is held in common and gold and silver are used not as currency but as the material for making shackles and chamber pots. However, all is not as it seems, and the paradoxes in the names of Hythloday ('the nonsense speaker') and Utopia ('nowhere') reveal a more complex story.
8vo (22 x 14.5 cm); photographic facsimile plates, occasional light spotting; crushed red morocco by Bayntun Riviere, gilt spine in 6 compartments, slightly faded, all edges gilt, very good; c, 347, [1]pp.
Stock code 125293
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The Utopia of Sir Thomas More
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