"THEATRE OF THE WORLD"

[Boistuau, Pierre] [Kemp, Theodorus, tr.]: Het toonneel oft spiegel des aerdt-bodems waer in te sien is een breede verhalinghe van des menschen catyuicheyt. t' Amsterdam, by Zacharias Heyns [colophon: tot Leyden, by Henrick L. van Haestens]. 1599.

A rare 16th-century imprint, in a pocket format, this is the first Dutch edition of "The theatre of the world" (Théâtre du Monde) of the French humanist Pierre Boistuau (c.1517-1566), a philosophical work on human suffering written for the wider reading public, which had a large international impact, and whose sources included the medieval miseria humanis genre, 16th-cent. authors Erasmus, Antonio de Guevara and Giambattista Gelli, neoplatonism and neostoicism (Doukas).   

Details

One volume, 11.7 cms. x 8.2 cms., duodecimo, pp. [312]. Signed: A-N12. Small intaglio illustration to title-page. Woodcut initials. Roman and black letter, printed side notes. Light browning, staining, last leaf a bit ragged (text unaffected). Bound in contemporary vellum wrappers, remains of alum-tawed fastenings. (Binding loose at bottom joint). 

Bookplate (damaged) of Ignaz Dominik, Graf Chorinsky von Ledske (1729-1792) (library dispersed 1930).

Bibliography:

STCN 060012307. OCLC shows one copy outside Netherlands (Paris Mazarine).

Giorgios Doukas, Pierre Boaistuau (c.1517-1566) and the employment of humanism in mid sixteenth-century France (PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011), see esp. 167-184.

On Chorinsky, see J.A. Hill Instagram post, 25 August 2020, https://www.instagram.com/jahillbooks/p/CEUtdTGJxi-/