Utopia Unbound

Abstract This chapter traces the publication of the early Latin editions of Utopia—Louvain (1516), Paris (1517), Basel (1518 twice), and Florence (1519)—exploring the various and shifting influences that informed the rhetorical and material representation of More’s work. It considers the nature of authorial control as Utopia passed through many hands, whether those of editors and typesetters in the print shops or those of readers whose letters anticipated and then discussed Utopia as part of the correspondents’ self-presentation and participation in Erasmian circles. The mutating prefatory materials of Utopia are seen as overlapping with the epistolary rhetoric propagated by Erasmus’ and Budé’s printed collections, publications enlarging the paratextual interplay between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’; likewise, in Froben’s hands, and through the design of his title pages, Utopia was framed with a range of Erasmian works. The chapter turns finally to the attenuated Florentine edition to consider its breaking from these patterns of collaborative aggregation.