SPECULATION.

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

Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid, The definitive third edition of one of the most striking and bizarre books in all economic literature, ruthlessly satirizing - through a series of large engravings with accompanying text - the mass hysteria, greed, credulousness, and deception which characterizes stock market bubbles. The third edition presents the work, for the first time, as a luxury picture book in a bespoke binding. The Tafereel reprints and adapts a multitude of Dutch texts and prints that came out on the theme of economic bubbles and speculative mania, chiefly satirical. The avowed purpose of the book, as stated on the title page, was to convey a "warning for future generations", though of course it was more broadly a humorous take on the bubbles and the get-rich-quick schemes which were a persistent and prominent feature of Dutch life of the period. The Dutch stock market was rivalled only by London in its scope and reach. It saw extensive public engagement and investment, and - though it is chiefly Tulip Mania which is remembered now - bubbles and crashes were common. There was thus a ready market for such a volume at the time, and its popularity still endures today: "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" (Rob

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