The Appeal of Composite Books for Erasmus and Johann Froben c. 1515

Abstract

Erasmus published many books with the press of Johann Froben in Basel starting in 1514. I focus here on the imprints of the first two years of their partnership and ponder why so many of these books were composite—that is, containing multiple texts authored by one or more people. I identify three main motives for these composite books: an intellectual motive to highlight similarities between the different texts included; a practical motive to meet and/or create a minimum respectable size for a learned book; and a commercial motive to differentiate a new edition from a recent one published by another press by including supplementary material in order to avoid accusations of directly undercutting a confrere’s profit and to justify a new edition to buyers. A focus on the original publications is crucial to reconstructing these composite books since modern editions of Erasmus’s works generally do not include or mention the other items with which his work was printed.