"Herfsttij der Middeluwen", or "The Autumn of the Middle Ages" - the original title - is a portrait of life thought, and art in 14th and 15th century France and the Netherlands. For Huizinga, this period marked not the birth of a dramatically new era in history, the Renaissance, but the fullest, ripest phase of medieval life and thought. Now, for the first time ever, the original version of this classic work has been translated into English. In the 1924 translation, Fritz Hopman adapted, reduced, and altered the Dutch edition - softening Huizinga's often passionate arguments, dulling his nuances, and eliminating passages. He also rearranged and redivided chapters, dropped references, and introduced mistranslations. This edition is free of such errors, recreating the second Dutch edition - which represents Huizinga's thinking at its most important stage - as closely as possible. Everything has been restored. Prose quotations appear in French, with translations printed at the bottom of the page. Mistranslations have been corrected.
Payton and Mammitzsch also have added helpful material, including Huizinga's preface to the first and the second Dutch editions (1919 and 1921) and the one to the 1924 German translation. Several notes clarify Huizinga's references to things which would be common knowledge only to Dutch readers, Huizinga frequently refers to paintings, sculptures, and carvings, some little known; this edition also includes full range of illustrations.