‘Joscelyn Godwin has proven that a desiccated rose can not only live again, but may also, with the help of fantasy, grow vivid as never before’ – The New York Times Review of Books

'A mammoth task of inestimable value, carried out with learning, elegance and wit'– International Herald Tribune

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili has been called the first stream-of-consciousness novel, and is one of the most important documents of Renaissance imagination and fantasy. The author (thought to be a friar of dubious reputation) was obsessed by architecture, landscape and costume – it is not going too far to say sexually obsessed – and its woodcuts are a primary source for Renaissance ideas on buildings and gardens.

Exactly five hundred years after its first publication, by the great Venetian printing house of Aldus Manutius, Francesco Colonna’s weird, erotic, allegorical antiquarian tale, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, was translated into English and reprinted in full, together with all of its 174 original – and enchanting – woodcut illustrations.

Long prized by generations of scholars, this classic book, now in paperback, has at last gained the wider audience its genius merits. Its central role in the plot of the international bestseller The Rule of Four has also brought the book's beauty and intrigue to popular attention.

This translation was first published by Thames & Hudson in 1999 in a large format that exactly matched the original in size, design and typography. This new edition reproduces the first in everything but size – it is about a third smaller. It retains all the text and illustrations and is easy to handle and read.

See and print out all the woodcut illustrations in the book from our picture gallery.

Also of interest
Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World by Joscelyn Godwin
Athanasius Kircher: A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge
Ornament and the Grotesque: Fantastical Decoration from Antiquity to Art Nouveau