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Desiderius Erasmus. The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1802 to 1925. Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 13. Trans. Charles Fantazzi. Ann. James K. Farge. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010. 574 pages.
Desiderius Erasmus. The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1926 to 2081. Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 14. Trans. Charles Fantazzi. Ann. James M. Estes. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2011. 503 pages.
Entering his sixties Erasmus complained, "These days more than half of my time is devoted to reading and writing letters, which are many and prolix and often unpleasant" (14.146). Letters had long since been a duty and excuse: "If I dedicated myself to nothing else I could scarcely keep up with the letters that speed their way to me from all parts of the world, not always pleasant nor of the kind that can be answered in a few words" (13.482). In the latest volumes of the Collected Works of Erasmus (hereafter CWE) the University of Toronto Press continues one of the most ambitious, meticulous, and essential scholarly projects now underway.
Erasmus began publishing collections of his correspondence in 1515 and kept publishing them for the rest of his life, first as models of epistolary style, later as sorties and defenses in the religious strife of the 1520's and 30's: 155 of the 287 letters in CWE 13 and 14 were published by Erasmus himself in his Selectae epistolae (1528), Opus epistolarum (1529), Epistolae floridae (1531), or within other works. For most, this is the first English translation.
Volumes 13 and 14 of the Correspondence (22 are projected) cover Erasmus' correspondence from 28 March 1527 through 1528, a period that witnessed Henry VIII's maneuvering for a divorce, war between Francis I and Charles V, murderous divisions in Christendom, and the steadily expanding power of print. Erasmus wrote, "I have had the ill fortune of growing old in these times" (13.153). When Johann Froben, his beloved...