Lucubrationes, ab innumeris mendis repurgatae. Utopiae libri II. Progymnasmata. Epigrammata. Ex Lucinao conversa quaedam. Declamatio Lucianicae respondens. Epistolae. Quibus additae sunt duae aliorum Epistolae, de vita, moribus & morte Mori

Basel: Episcopium F.[ratres], 1563. FIRST COLLECTED EDITION. Hardcover. Fine. With the woodcut illustration of the island of Utopia. A fine copy in 16th c. English calf (re-cased, small repairs, later gold lettering on spine, endpapers renewed. One of the original pastedowns- the leaf from an early English almanac -is visible on the inner rear board.) An excellent copy, the vast majority of the text very fresh, with just some very minor faults: inner margin of title page repaired (far from the text), light stain along top blank edge of first 4 lvs, slight marginal fraying to first 3 lvs., small stain on leaf p8, very light dampstain to the final three gatherings, very small marginal tears to final 3 lvs. The woodcut illustration of the Island of Utopia is on leaf d3. Printer's device on final leaf, verso. Bookplate: "William Salkeld, Esq.", possibly the Serjeant-at-law and law reporter of that name (1671-1715). First edition of the collected Latin works of Sir Thomas More, including the "Utopia" illustrated with a full-page woodcut map. Among the letters published here for the first time is a letter to Martin Dorpius in which More defends Erasmus' translation of the New Testament from the Greek, thus clearly siding with the enlightened "new learning". It also contains a letter from Erasmus to Ulrich von Hutten which contains details of More's physical appearance. There are 9 letters from More to Erasmus, 1 of which concerns the portrait that Erasmus sent to More so that he could always be with him (See "Gifts for an absent friend" below.)

The full-page illustration of the Island of Utopia is based on Ambrosius Holbein's woodcut from the 1518 Froben edition.

"Utopia" begins with More's encounter with Raphael Hythloday (whose name means 'teller of tall tales'), a traveler 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 ownership, where six hours a day are devoted to work and the rest to recreation, where gold and silver are used not as currency but as the material for making shackles and chamber pots, and slaves (criminals and prisoners of war) are treated fairly. In its geography and topography, the island bears a striking resemblance to England. There are fifty-four city-states on the island, perhaps mirroring the number of shires in England and Wales (plus London) in More's time, and all are identical in languages, customs, and laws and similar in size, layout, and appearance.

"More positioned his country somewhere in the New World (or, at least beyond the limits of the currently known world), for he states that his narrator, Raphael Hythlodaeus, participated in the last three of Amerigo Vespucci's four voyages. On the final voyage, Hythlodaeus did not come home with Vespucci; rather, he continued his explorations and ultimately discovered Utopia, where he lived for five years before, miraculously, returning to Europe on a Portuguese vessel. Hythlodaeus's descriptions of his residence in Utopia provide the heart of the piece."(Delaney)

Gifts for an absent friend: The Portraits of Erasmus and Gillis:

The volume also includes Thomas More's letters to Peter Gillis (in whose garden More had conceived of the "Utopia") and Erasmus, in which he thanks his friends for the portraits of themselves that they had sent to More as gifts. The two men had commissioned the leading Antwerp painter of the day, Quentin Matsys, to paint the two portraits as a dyptich. The idea behind the gift being that, through these portraits, Erasmus and Gillis could always be close to their friend.

More received the paintings in October 1517 at Calais (where he was on embassy for Henry VIII.) "More wrote from Calais to thank each donor, asking each to show his letter to the other. He surely took his new treasure with him when he returned to London in December. More's letter to Erasmus acknowledges receipt of the diptych (tabula duplex), praises the artist's handiwork and rejoices at his own good luck in having such friends. His letter to Gillis encloses a brace of Latin epigrams, one in elegiac couplets and another in hexameters, which he has made in honor of the gift. Gillis is to pass these on to Erasmus if he thinks them fit for such eyes; otherwise he is to burn them. In the first, the diptych is the speaker: 'I bear witness that Erasmus and Gillis are as dear friends as were Castor and Pollux long ago. More is sad to be parted from them, though affection joins them to him as closely as to himself. In turn they were sad that their absent friend should miss them. An affectionate letter brings More their inward thoughts, but I bring their outward appearance.'

"In the second, longer, epigram More represents himself as speaking. Anyone, he says, will recognize the sitters, even though he has never seen them, for one [Gillis] is holding a letter addressed to himself, and the other [Erasmus] is actually writing his own name. If this did not give Erasmus away, the titles written on the books in the portrait would do so: they are famous the world over. Quentin, the rival of Apelles, ought to have entrusted such images to a medium more enduring than wood, if he wished to make certain that his own name would endure. What a price posterity would pay for such a picture! The letter goes on to praise Matsys for his skill, especially in his accurate imitation, on the letter in Gillis's hand, of More's own handwriting. 'Unless', he says, 'either of you has some other use for the letter, send it back to me. Put up beside the picture it will make it seem more wonderful than ever'. In a later letter to Erasmus, still from Calais, on 25th October, More renews his thanks for the gift and in another of 5th November, to the same from the same city, he mentions the diptych again and retails the judgment of Cuthbert Tunstal, friend, fellow-ambassador and later his Bishop, on his verses.

"Of Thomas More's letter to Gillis with the verses only one manuscript survives. This is not autograph, but a transcript by an amanuensis of Erasmus's ('Hand B') in the contemporary Deventer copybook of Erasmus's correspondence. The text of the letter was soon in circulation in humanist Europe via one of the printed collections of Erasmus's letters, where the epigrams are preceded by a rubric:

'Verses on a diptych in which Erasmus and Pieter Gillis are depicted together by the skilful artificer Quentin, in such a way that the books [in the background of the portrait of] Erasmus beginning [to write] his Paraphrase of the Epistle to the Romans display their titles; and Pieter holds in his hand a letter of More's addressed to him, which the painter has also delineated.'

"This rubric is clearly an addition, perhaps by Beatus Rhenanus, making More's statement more explicit."(Lorne Campbell, Margaret Mann Philipps, Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen, and J. B. Trapp, "Quentin Matsys, Desiderius Erasmus, Pieter Gillis and Thomas More" in The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 120, No. 908, Special Issue Devoted to Portraiture and Britain (Nov., 1978), pp. 716-725).