FABS Handpress Era: Martha Driver on Collecting Erasmus

“Collecting Erasmus”

Martha will share a brief bio of the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (d. 1536) and provide short descriptions of several Erasmus volumes in her collection. These include the first edition of Erasmus’s In Novum Testamentum Annotationes (1542) which has been heavily censored by a very assiduous member of the counter-Reformation, the Colloquies (printed by Charlotte Guillard, 1519), the Adages (printed by Gryphius, 1550), the Apophthegmatum (1641), and two editions of the Praise of Folly, one in English (1668) and one in French (1728). Along the way, she will discuss Erasmus’s friendships with powerful people, not the least of whom were printers and the painter, Hans Holbein the Younger, who promoted the work of Erasmus and helped to make him famous.

Martha Westcott Driver is Distinguished Professor of English at Pace University in New York City and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. A co-founder of the Early Book Society for the study of manuscripts and printing history, she writes about illustration from manuscript to print and manuscript and book production. In addition to publishing some 80 articles in these areas, she has edited thirty-two journals, including the Journal of the Early Book Society. Her books include The Image in Print: Book Illustration in Late Medieval England (published by the British Library in 2001), An Index of Images in English MSS, with Michael Orr (2007), Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Susan Powell, with Veronica O’Mara (2013), and John Gower in Manuscript and Early Printed Books, edited with Derek Pearsall and Robert F. Yeager (2020). She chairs the Early Book Society (earlybooksociety.org) and serves on the executive committee and board of the American Patrons of the National Library and Galleries of Scotland (americanpatrons.org) as well as the visiting committee of the Morgan Library & Museum, and the American Trust for the British Library (https://atbl.us/leadership/).