BRANDT, SEBASTIAN.

The Ship of Fools.

      SINGLE LEAF. - Leaf LXXII. Text in English on one side and in Latin on the other side, the Latin text is printed in Roman type; the English is uniformly printed in the Gothic. The English text is by Alexander Barclay (1476-1552), it is a free imitation of the German poem. The English text is with a large (11,3 x 8 cm,) woodcut depicting a fool with his gees at market. London, Richard Pynson, 1509. 28 x 19 cm. The printer Richard Pynson (fl. 1490-1528) worked in Rouen before he came to London, where he began by printing legal works. About 1490 he took over the business of William de Machlinia. Pynson quickly became the most important printer of the day and became 1508 the second holder of the office of King's Printer. The author Sebastian Brant (1457- 1521) was a satirical poet whose work 'Das Narrenschiff' -- The Ship of Fools-- is the most famous German literary work of its time. Published in 1494, it tells the story of a sailing vessel taking a shipload of fools to a fool's paradise. Each of more than 100 characters embodies a particular facet of foolishness: drunkenness, lechery, greed, etc. Brandt's work was perhaps the most famous book of its time, and it appeared between 1494 and 1548 in German, Latin, French, English, Flemish and Dutch editions. Alexander Barclay's 'Ship of Fools' (1509) is a free imitation of the German poem, and a Latin version by Jacobus Locher (1497) was hardly less popular than the German original. 'The English 'Ship of fools' exereised an important direct influence upon our literature, pre-eminently to bury mediæval allegory in the grave which had long yawed before it, and to direct English authorship into the drama, essay, and novel of character' (A. W. Ward).