This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/25/2024
[COPPER ENGRAVINGS]. [SOUTH SEA / MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE]. [LAW, John (1671-1729), association]. [“The Great Mirror of Folly…”] Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid, Vertoonende de opkomst, voortgang en ondergang de Actie, Bubbel en Windnegotie, in Vrankryk, Engeland, en de Nederlanden, gepleegt in den Jaare MDCCXX… [Amsterdam:] “Gedrukt tot waarschouwinge voor de Nakomelingen, in’t noodlottige, Jaar, voor veel Zotte en Wyze, 1720 [though later]. Large folio. Illustrated with 55 double-page plates and maps, and 21 single page plates, including “Register.” [ii], 1-[26], 1-52, [1]-31, [1, blank], [vii], 1-10 pp. Approximately 17 ½ x 10 ½”. Uncut copy. Bound in contemporary half calf over mottled boards, brown gilt morocco lettering label on spine (binding quite worn, chipped, front hinge starting, some occasional foxing throughout). Still, near fine. LATER ISSUE (74 plates listed in the Register). A charming book with beautiful and fanciful illustrations lampooning the economic disaster known as the Mississippi Bubble, which affected England, France, and Holland, based on the clever marketing of economist John Law. “This great Theatre of Folly, representing the origin, progress, and downfall of the South Sea Bubble in France, England, and Holland, is an exceedingly curious collection of emblematical plates and caricatures on the scheme of J. Law [whose portrait appears as the third plate] and the Mississippi Company [between 1718 and 1720] and the imitations of it in Holland, with fatal results. Not a few of the scenes here depicted have been reproduced in the New York Exchange. The engravings, which illustrate the rise and fall of the great speculation, are full of humor; many of them are exceedingly ludicrous, and some very obscene. They are finely engraved on copper, and are accompanied with full descriptions in prose and poetry” (Sabin). Sabin 28932.