SPECULATION.

£12,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid, Second edition of one of the most striking and bizarre books in all economic literature, ruthlessly satirizing - through large engravings with accompanying text - the mass hysteria, greed, credulity, and deception that characterize stock market bubbles. This copy, very unusually, is in a contemporary English binding, perhaps reflecting English interest in bubbles following the South Sea collapse.The Tafereel reprints and adapts a multitude of satirical Dutch texts and prints on the theme of economic bubbles and speculative mania. As stated on the title page, its aim was to serve as a "warning for future generations", though in practice it offered a humorous commentary on the speculative schemes that pervaded Dutch life at the time. "This book works so well because the Tafereel is not just about the eighteenth century; it is also a mirror of other times, other public hysterias, and other speculative bubbles - even of our recent financial crises and the kinds of speculative folly that led to the financial crises of recent years" (Goetzmann, p. vii). The first edition was issued in 1720. The second edition was issued from 1721 to 1723 and added the additional plates found here. This copy is from the first issue of the second edition, without the fifth text part, E - Goetzman presents those without E as issued in 1721, and those with it from 1722 to 1723 (Goetzman, p. 47). The third edition, issued after 1723, has all the plates in folio, wherea

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