Description:
A three-volume edition of early modern English translations of the works of Erasmus.
Brief description: Alex Davis is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of three books: Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance (Boydell and Brewer, 2003), Renaissance Historical Fiction (Boydell and Brewer, 2011), and Imagining Inheritance from Chaucer to Shakespeare (OUP, 2020).
Review Quotes:
'In Gregory Dodds's formulation, repeated in Alex Davis's excellent Introduction (I: 3), "there is no simple story of Erasmus' influence in England". [...] These two volumes [...] constitute a welcome, handsome, and substantial contribution to this story. [...] The volumes are a model of English Erasmianism and belong in all libraries.'
Brian Cummings, Review of English Studies, 76.324 (2025), pp. 217-20, doi:10.1093/res/hgaf026
'Erasmus in English, 1523-1584 is a singular contribution to the study of Erasmus reception in the early modern, English-speaking world. [...] Each work is prefaced with an academic introduction, and there are numerous, insightful annotations throughout. Furthermore, each of these volumes concludes with extensive textual notes, a genuinely fascinating list of neologisms introduced into English through the translation of Erasmus, and a glossary. Finally, because the MHRA Tudor & Stuart Translations are available in JSTOR, these and other works in the series easily lend themselves to classroom use across multiple disciplines.'
Benjamin Guyer, Erasmus Studies, 45 (2025), pp. 249-51, doi:10.1163/18749275-04502008
'Both the scholar and the learned reader will realize the many layers of appreciation that these volumes offer.'
Joan Tello, Renaissance Quarterly, 78 (2025), pp. 509-12, doi:10.1017/rqx.2024.373
'Along with Alex Davis' General Introduction, appearing in the first volume, [the introductions to each text] are an edifying delight: concise yet comprehensive, capturing the sweep of religious history and the fine grain of philological insight, they exude an infectious enthusiasm for the material while managing to report both basic facts and the latest scholarship.'
David Currell, Translation and Literature, 32 (2023), pp. 237-44