[Stultifera nauis, qua omnium mortalium narratur stultitia, admodum vtilis & necessaria ab omnibus ad suam salutem perlegenda, è Latino sermone in nostrum vulgarem versa, & iam diligenter impressa. by [BRANT (Sebastian) and BARCLAY (Alexander)]

An. Do. 1570. The ship of fooles, wherin is shewed the folly of all states, with diuers other workes adioyned vnto the same, very profitable and fruitfull for all men. Translated out of Latin into Englishe by Alexander Barclay priest. [on colophon:] Imprinted at London : In Paules Church-yarde by Iohn Cavvood printer to the Queenes maiestie.] F’cap (so watermarked) folio, 271 x 180mm, in sixes; nothing called for before title-page (which is here lacking); colophon leaf at end (lacking); large woodcut historiated initial on p.1, one small historiated initial, and one hundred and six large woodcut illustrations (ex one hundred and sixteen, including eight that are included three times and one twice) in the text; ff.[11 ^{ex 12} (not foliated)]+259^-11+[3 (Index, Latin followed by English, not foliated, last page blank)]+[40 ^{ex 42} (not foliated, last page blank)]+[16 ^{ex 24} (not foliated)]; ¶ ^{5 ex 6}, ¶¶, A - C⁶, D ^{5 ex 6}, E - H ⁶, I ^{5 ex 6}, K - L⁶, M^{4 ex 6}, N -T⁶, U^{4 ex 6}, X - Z, Aa - Ii, Kk - Qq⁶, Rr^{4 ex 6}, Tt - Uv⁶, Xx⁴; A - B⁶, C^{4 ex 6}, D - G⁶; A - B⁶, C - D ^{2 ex 6}; original limp vellum, end-papers of printer’s waste (v.note). Vellum cockled, dusty, and slightly torn or chipped at head and tail of spine; lacking in all twenty-two leaves ex 340 (v. note); last two gatherings bound in reversed order; strip cut from margin of N2 (possibly to remove a side-note); lower fore-corner torn from S6, with loss to small portion of marginal type-ornament; marginal tears and small chip to Bb2, with loss of four or five letters of side-note; two small holes in Ff4, with loss of three letters of text, and insignificant damage to illustration; light smudging (probably a fault during printing) to fore-margin of Kk6, touching but not obscuring two of the side-notes; small chip to extreme blank lower-margin Ll3 and Ll4; chips and small tears to blank fore-margin Nn1 unobtrusively repaired with matching period paper and without loss to either text or side-notes; light damp-staining to Oo1; trimming error to Pp4 leaving flap of extra paper at lower fore-corner (and corner folded in), showing leaf was originally 18mm longer and wider; marginal pen trials to Tt6v (with offsetting), and third A6r; small light stain blank lower margin second E2 - 4 and third B5 - 6; last three leaves dusty, and C3 - 4 frayed at lower fore-margins with loss of about ten letters of text on versos; some extreme blank corners turned or worn; in general, however, a clean, sound copy of a very scarce book, distinctly so to-day in its original dress. For all practical purposes the earliest purchasable text in English of ‘The Ship of Fools’, preceded only by an edition of the same translation published by Pynson late in 1509, and a translation by Henry Watson published by Wynkyn de Worde earlier the same year, both of which are now very rare. The main text is a rather loose rendering of ‘Das Narrenschiff’, a satirical poem by the humanist poet Sebastian Brant (1458 - 1521), published originally in German in 1494, but based not upon Brant’s original but on a Latin version by Jacob Locher, first published in 1497 and here included as a parallel text (printed in Roman type, the English text being in Gothic), with hints from the version in French by Pierre Rivière dating from the same year, and also from a version in Dutch. The Barclay text is supplemented not only by side-notes, but also by interpolations in verse, by Barclay, for the most part identified as such by sub-titles. The woodcuts in the present edition are from the same blocks that were used by Pynson in the original edition of Barclay’s translation, and were cut after the Parisian copies made for the 1497 French translation. The Parisian blocks in their turn were imitations of the woodcuts used in the original German edition (Basel, 1494), which used to be ascribed to Dürer, though are now considered to have been the work of the Master of the Bergman Printing House. ‘Das Narrenschiff’, in which each of the one hundred and eleven fools contained in the ship embody some vice or other human imperfection, was one of the most popular books of its time. Added in this edition are two extra related and interesting texts: ‘The Mirrour of good Maners. Conteining the foure Cardinal Vertues, compiled in Latin by Dominike Mancin, and translated into English by Alexander Barclay priest, and Monke of Ely. At the desire of the righte worshipfull sir [sic] Giles Alington Knight.’ [ff.(1)-(42): (STC 17243, the second edition of a translation of ‘De quattuor virtutibus’ first published c.1518), and ‘Certayne egloges Of Alexander Barclay Priest, Whereof the first three conteyne the miseryes Of Courtiers and Courtes of all princes in generall, Gathered out of a booke named in Latin, Miseriæ Cvrialium, compiled By Eneas Siluius [PICCOLOMINI, i.e., Pope Pius II] Poet and Oratour.’ [ff.(1)-(24): (a reprint of STC 1384/5)]. The limp vellum wrappers of this volume could never have been intended as a permanent binding. It must have been expected that the purchaser of so expensive a thing as a thick folio volume would have it properly bound in leather over boards (conceivably of oak). At the time this volume was published, printers were still usually their own publishers, and it is a reasonable assumption, therefore, that the book was bound as we now see it for, or by, Cawood - for as McKerrow notes “many of the early printers were also binders” (Introduction to Bibliography, 1928, p.121). Limp vellum wrappers represented a cheap way of protecting the text until a purchaser were found. If this is the case, the printer’s waste used for the end-papers is not without interest, since it consists of two preliminary leaves from a folio Great Bible, and Cawood himself, who died in 1572, printed editions of the Great Bible in 1568 and 1569 - just one year before the present volume. The end-papers, however, are not from Cawood’s Great Bibles, but apparently from the seventh edition of the Great Bible, printed in 1541 by Richard Grafton, the leaves concerned being headed alternately ‘The Prologue’ and ‘To the Reader’ and being identifiable as to their origin by the existence at the end of the Prologue beneath the words ‘God save the King’ of two pairs of large initials, in each case ‘H’ and ‘R’, the first pair decorated and an inch high, the lower pair some two and a half inches high and of very elaborate design, and also by the signature mark, which is a Maltese cross. Between the upper pair of initials is what appears to be an ownership inscription in an early (court) hand, now largely illegible. The question arises, if the volume were so dressed for Cawood, how he came to be using a 1541 Great Bible as waste-paper in 1570? - and it is an interesting speculation that he may earlier have been using it as printer’s copy. The missing leaves are ¶1 (title); D1, I5, Q6, Cc2 and Cc5, Ff2, Oo6 (Fols.9, 53, 96, 152, 155, 170, and 222 in ‘Stultifera Navis’); the second C3 and C4 (‘Mirror of Good Manners’); C and D 1, 2, 5, and 6 in the (third and fourth ‘Eclogue’). In this copy the following errors of foliation have been noted: 31 marked 13, 99: 96, 150: 156, 191: 188, 200: 100, and 201: 205. STC (2nd ed.) 3546; Pforzheimer, 41; ESTC S107135. All books listed by Robert Temple are first editions unless otherwise stated.