Seventeenth Century
Amsterdam: Joannem Blaeu, 1655.
London: Thomas Cotes for Richard Whitaker, 1638.
Bratislava: Joh. Adam. Kästneri, 1680 [but probably 1683].
London: E. Horton for T Sawbridg, 1685.
London: Roger Daniel and John Redmayne, 1659.
London: [William Stansby,] 1626.
Dresden: Widow and Heirs of Melchior Bergen for Martin Gabriel Hubner, 1676.
First edition. "Merbitz's book takes features of the human face and describes them by mathematical and alphabetical schemes, constructs cipher systems, and reproduces figured poems by the medieval encyclopedist Hrabanus Maurus (780-856)." Norman, Cyberspace. [Norman notes that Charles Babbage owned a copy, see Norman Cat 28 (1994) 431.] Hrabanus Maurus, the Benedictine archbishop of Mainz was a celebrated encyclopaedist, but his most remarkable legacy is his series of 28 figured poems De laudibus sanctae crucis, a collection of twenty-eight encrypted religious poems, composed before 814 AD. Using a 36 by 36 grid he composed sacred poems (each line in Latin contains precisely 36 letters) which incorporated simple spiritual images formed from contrasting coloured letters (red, in our versions) within the grid, each making brief, succinct verses in their own right. The intention was that the grid provided both texts and images for contemplation, prayer and visual memorization. Merbitz includes 8 of Maurus' "concrete prayers." view more...
London: by J[ames]. C[ottrell]. for Tho. Dring, 1676.
First edition of a celebrated English wine and cider book, considering many aspects of the production of drinks from fruit and the cultivation of fruit in general. The first chapter "Of drinks in general" is a brief attempt at a survey of drinking habits across the world, with references to drinks popular in Europe, Africa, the Indes and America (Caribbean, Brazil, Peru, Chile) which include tea, coffee and chocolate. The main body of the work is devoted to the cultivation of apples and vines in England, the preparation of the fruit and the making of cider and wines. The latter includes various fruit wines and specialities such as metheglin. The final "Catalogue of fruits" presents a marvellous litany of old-English apple names: Pearmains, Pippins, Russetts, Marigold, Gilliflower, Famagusta, Cat's head, Gennet-Moyle... let's have some more... Non-such, Angel's bit, Oaken-pin, Sodome-Apple ("esteemed a good apple"). view more...
London: for Philemon Stephens, [1636].
London: for Tho[mas] Newcomb, and are to be sold by Humphrey Moseley, 1655.
London: S. Griffin for William Lee, 1667.
An influential seventeenth-century exhortation to thrift and monetary economy. This edition is the fourth printing, being preceded by editions of 1641, 1647 and1664. It is usually referred to as the third edition, the 1641 edition (which survives in a single copy) having been printed for private circulation only."The Worth of a Peny... was first privately issued for presentation to the author's friends, was printed originally, as internal evidence shows, in 1641, and not in 1647—the year which appears, by an error, on the title-page. It was dedicated to Richard, eldest son of Richard Gipps, one of the judges of the Guildhall, London. It discusses, without much plan, the economic condition of the country, but includes many interesting anecdotes illustrating social life. A new edition in 1664 added some biographical observations by a friend of Peacham, who knew him in the Low Countries." The author is best known for his emblem books and the popular Compleat Gentleman view more...
Rostock: Joachym Wilde, 1662.
London: by M[iles]. F[lesher]. for Sa. Gellibrand at the brasen Serpent in Pauls Church-yard, 1648.
Second edition, issued in the same year as the first with a new title-page. It is "the first text on mechanics available in the English language. It is divided into two parts "Archimedes or Mechanical Powers" and "Daedalus or Mechanical Motions"- the latter part describing various machines, including strange devices and possibilities, such as a land vehicle powered by wind, submarines, flying automata, clocks, magnetic perpetuum mobile, etc. His sources were Guidobaldo's Mechanicorum liber and Mersenne's Cogitata physico-mathematica... One may see Wilkins' work as a popular version of Mersenne's work" (Biblioteca Mechanica). Wilkins was a leading figure in the English scientific renaissance, being, at various times influential at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and in the Royal Society (of which he was president from 1660-1661). He is known also for his conjectures on extra-terrestrial life (The discovery of a world in the moone, 1638).Both the first and second editions bear the date 1648. view more...
London: for W. Hensman, 1672.
Lyon "Suivant la copie imprimée A Lyon, Chez Jean Certe, ru' Merciere, à l'enseigne de la Trinité," 1682.
London: Richard Thrale, 1638.
A cento in Virgilian verse giving the principal Biblical events from the death of Abel to the ascension of Christ, mainly concerning the life of Christ and the prophecies of his Messiahship, the text extensively revised and enlarged from the author's Virgilius evangelisans, sive, Historia Domini & Salvatoris Nostri Jesu Christi (1633). Ross was born in Aberdeen but spent much of his later life in England, being vicar of Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight from 1634 to his death twenty years later. He was a voluminous and well-regarded writer, and is best known for his translation of the Koran (from the French), the first version in English.This is an interesting copy, its binding bearing Tudor rose devices on the covers, a relatively late example of what was in any case a rare emblem among bookbinding tools. Our copy is without the printed title, like the copy (Universty of Minnesota) reproduced for Early English Books Online. It retains a neat stub, suggesting deliberate cancellation rather than loss. The book is known for the variances in its makeup, notably in the final leaves. In our copy there are stubs of 2 cancelled leaves before the final leaf (a cancel) the text ending correctly p. 312 and the imprimatur of William Bray dated 1637. view more...
[n.p.], 1688.
First edition in French of Johnson's polemic against the succession of the Duke of York (later James II). Published in English in 1682 "It was an overnight sensation... The tract drew an elaborate parallel between the fourth-century apostate emperor, Julian, and the Catholic successor to the crown, James, duke of York. The moral of the story was that, as the primitive Christians of the fourth century had openly resisted their pagan emperor, so the English might oppose a popish prince. The tract justified both the efforts of whigs to exclude the duke of York from the throne as well as active resistance to him. Julian Johnson, as Johnson soon became known, was praised and celebrated by fellow whigs" (Zook in Oxford DNB). The work was supressed and the remaining copies burnt. Johnson was imprisoned for seditious libel.The French edition, presumably aimed at a continental Protestant audience was issued in the year of James's effective abdication and escape to France. In certain French eyes, the thrust of its argument seems to have become quickly diverted towards their own monarch, since in 1696 it was issued under a false Cologne imprint under a new title La peste du genre humain, ou la vie de Julien l'Apostat. Mise en paralelle avec celle de Louis XIV. view more...
London: J. Flesher for William Morden, Bookseller in Cambridge, 1659.
First edition. Regarded as one of the leading philosophers of his day, More was the most prolific of the Cambridge Platonists. The immortality of the soul typifies the so-called Platonists' response to the arch-materialism of Thomas Hobbes. More was no apologist for religious superstition but the work was designed to prove the existence of an incoporeal substance (or soul) in terms readily understandable by the most rational of materialists. For More, if the existence of God were accepted, it followed (by logic) that the existence of spirits could be proven. This work is important in the development of More's philosophy since it was the first in which he "proposed his theory of the 'spirit of nature' to explain causal agency in the natural world" (Hutton, Oxford DNB)."According to More the Spirit of Nature is the interface between the divine and the material. As a concept, it has affinities with Plato's anima mundi (world soul), and the Stoics' pneuma. The Spirit of Nature can also be understood as encapsulating 'certain general Modes and Lawes of Nature' (More, A Collection, Preface, p. xvi) since it is the Spirit of Nature that is responsible for uniting individual souls with bodies, and for ensuring the regular operation of non-animate nature. It is a 'Superintendant Cause' which combines efficient and telelological causality to ensure the smooth-running of the universe according to God's plan. More sought, by this hypothesis, to account for phenomena that apparently defy the laws of mechanical physics (for example the inter-vortical trajectory of comets, the sympathetic vibration of strings and tidal motion)..." (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, online). view more...
Douai: Baltazaris Belleri, 1637.
First published at Mainz in 1623 the Manualis Controversiarum provided an influential tool for Jesuits working against the teachings of Luther and Calvin. It is mainly concerned with the central questions of predestination, free will, the Eucharist and the infallibility of the Church, but also contains interesting considerations of lesser-known Reformation debates, such as the legality of duelling in the eyes of the Church. Becan was born at Hilvarenbeck, Brabant, Holland, 6 January, 1563 and died in Vienna, 24 January, 1624.Belleri was a prolific Douai printer and published a string of Jesuit and Catholic titles from the end of the sixteenth-century. Our copy of the Manualis bears a volume number on the spine suggesting it was from a run of similar-sized theological treatises. Nonetheless, it stands as a complete work in its own right, as published. view more...
Rouen: pour la Societé, 1666.
London: M.W. for Richard Chiswell, 1683.
First edition of "one of the most valuable authorities for the history of military sciences" (Ency. Brit, 1911). The work is divided into 3 books: Grecian, Roman and Modern; the latter being the longest and perhaps most interesting to the military historian. It includes chapters on the various types of weapon, military law, intelligence and spying, cavalry and infantry, organisation of regiments and so forth. Turner was a Scot who graduated master of arts from Glasgow University in 1631 but then trained as a soldier in the Swedish army. He saw much service in the Thirty Years' War, before returning to Scotland in 1639 (permanently in 1640) and serving in campaigns in Ulster and against the English. "After taking part in Charles II's invasion of England he was captured at the battle of Worcester (3 September), but escaped and joined the king in Paris. He lived mainly in Bremen and Amsterdam for two years, and ventured to land in Fife in June 1654 to see if there was any hope of a royalist rising there. Following a hasty withdrawal he spent a few years in a mixture of royalist intrigue and the search for employment, offering his services against the Swedes to the Poles and the Danes. On the outbreak of peace he settled at Breda with the exiled court of Charles II in 1659–60" (ODNB). He gained his knighthood at the restoration of the monarchy. view more...
London: printed by T[homas]. N[ewcomb]. for Henry Mortlock, at the Phoenix in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1681.
First edition of Stillingfleet's major work, urging unity in the Church of England in the face of emerging dissent at home and in the American colonies. It was developed from the author's controversial sermon The Mischief of Separation preached on 11 May 1680 before the whig lord mayor of London, Sir Robert Clayton, which caused a furore among Dissenters. Passionately committed to Protestant unity, Stillingfleet accused the Dissenters of an innate tendency to sectarianism which threatened the entire Protestant enterprise in the face of Catholic resurgency in England."Stillingfleet was clearly taken aback by the opposition to his sermon. In 1683 he produced a major work, The Unreasonableness of Separation, which enlarged upon the earlier sermon. Even if occasional conformity were accepted as the norm there would be no end to dissenters pressing for their various ideas of a perfect church, and so perpetuating schism. He admitted that various reforms were desirable in the Church of England, especially in the church courts to restore the puritan ideal of church discipline; but dissenters maintained their nonconformity only because of certain 'accidental appendices' and some 'circumstantials of worship' whereas the Church of England's schism with Rome rested on doctrinal issues—a very different matter" (Barry Till, ODNB).The work has considerable historical value, since Stillingfleet presents a very careful anatomy of the various phases of dissent, both in England and abroad. There are several interesting accounts of the early churches in North America and discussions of the debates between Roger Williams, John Cotton, Samuel Gorton. view more...
'Grenoble, & se vend a Paris': Charles de Sercy, 1664.
"A Amstelredam: chez Alethinosgraphe de Clearetimelee, & Graphexechon de Pistariste, à l'enseigne des trois vertus couronées d'Amaranthe," n.d. [1638];
The Mémoires are the principal source for the political, economic, military and legal history of the reign of Henry IV ("le Grand"), compiled by the king's most able and most trusted minister. Henry's reign marked the rehabilitation of France's fortunes after the near-disintegration of the country during the Wars of Religion. Sully's collection represents a very immediate account of the period between 1570 and 1628, including episodes such as Henry's conversion to Catholicism (arguably a political expediency urged by Sully himself, who remained Protestant); the Edict of Nantes (which promised religious toleration for the Huguenots); negotiations with the English crown (both Elizabeth and James I); and war with Spain (in alliance with England). Sully's own contrubution to the state is amply recorded - he is remembered for his reorganisation of the country's finances and system of office-holding as well as for his engineering projects (the Place Royale and the Briare Canal linking Seine and Loire being the best known). The Mémoires are historiographically advanced and include both critical narrative and a large number of transcribed diplomatic material. They have, however, been criticized for partiality and for containing "many fictions, such as a mission undertaken by Sully to Queen Elizabeth in 1601, and the famous 'Grand Design,' a plan for a Christian republic [or a United States of Europe], which some historians have taken seriously" (Ency. Brit, 1911). The work was completed posthumously by a second volume (present here) under the editorship of J. Le Laboureur. The bibliography of this work has been contentious. For a long time, our edition with the coloured frontispieces was accepted as the first, published with a false imprint at the Chateau de Sully itself. It is now clear that there were actually as many as 3 issues bearing versions of these title pages: the exceptionally rare true first edition printed under Sully's eye (with a different collation to ours); our swiftly-produced contrefaçon of the same year, and one other pirate edition. Complete sets of any edition are rare. view more...
London: A. Clark for Thomas Williams, 1674.
London: for John Bill, 1614.
Paris: Pierre Mo't, 1659.
A rare early edition of two of the most important alchemical texts by Basilius Valentinus, together with Bernardus' treatise on the philosopher's stone. First printed in Latin in 1599 Les douze clefs, together with Azoth, first appeared in French in 1624, translated by David Laigneau and published together. Traicté de la nature de l'oeuf des philosophes also first appeared in French that year and was probably intended as an accompaniment. The 1659 edition is important for having been dedicated by the publisher to the English natural philosopher Kenelm Digby, then resident in Paris studying Paracelsian chemistry and expounding the efficacy of his "powder of sympathy", a variant of the Paracelsian "weapon salve". Our copy bears Digby's arms in early (though not demonstrably contemporary) manuscript on a label pasted to the verso of the title. Some copies, though by no means all, of Les Douze Clefs contain an engraved suite of "keys". Ours, like the copy described by Ferguson, appears never to have had them and one suspects the existence of a preliminary issue before the keys were prepared. view more...
London: by Tho[mas] Roycroft for Rich [ard] Marriott, 1661.
Second edition. John Ogilby was a man of varied talents "dancing-master, courtier, and theatre owner between about 1620 and 1641; poet and translator from 1649; and, from about 1669, compiler of geographical works and atlases, culminating in his Britannia (1675)" (Oxford DNB). He was physically disabled as a young man, a misfortune thought to have arisen from his short dancing career with Ben Jonson. Ogilby's support from and for royalty is most clearly evident in The Entertainment of his Most Excellent Majestie Charles II (1661), which he both wrote and printed, a commemoration of the new king's coronation. Drawing upon earlier traditions of triumphal royal processions, Ogilby used the capital's streets as a theatrical stage for the promotion of civic virtue, royal authority, and future prosperity.The first and the second edition were each issued in two states: 1) with or 2) without leaves *a1 (a dedication to the Lord Mayor) and L1 (beginning with a list of names of the committee for arrangements appointed by the Common Council). Our edition has the heading on B1r "ENTERTAINMENT" and there is a five-line woodcut initial; the description on B1v begins with "MONDAY"; G1r has a six-line woodcut initial; and on K1r "CAVALCADE" is spelled without a hyphen. Cf. Fredson Bowers, "Ogilby's Coronation Entertainment (1661-1689): Editions and Issues" (PBSA 47 (1953), p. 340-42). view more...
London: W.G. for Obadiah Blagrave, 1675.
First edition: the first book in English on pygmies. It's author was a contemporary of Milton's at Cambridge and became a prominent Hellenist. Although pure fantasy, Gerania was influential and is believed to have influenced Swift's invention of Lilliput: "[Swift] may have read Joshua Barnes's description of a race of "Pygmies" in his Gerania of 1675" (Ency. Brit.)Gerania is one of the best examples of English seventeenth-century utopian literature. Linking history, classical antiquity and pseudo-ethnology, Barnes gives a fanciful account of an expedition to the head of the Ganges to find the 'blameless pygmies' mentioned in Homer's Iliad, painting a delightful, if idealised, vision of their Eden-like existence: "Their Habit was of the woolly Moss of Trees, most artificially cemented with Gum, and interspersed with delectable Posies; about their Necks they wore pleasant chains of odiferous Flower, the smell of which was their chiefest aliment…" "Barnes... leapt into the project of connecting classical and biblical antiquity, beginning with Gerania (1675), an English prose account of an expedition to visit the 'blameless pygmies' mentioned in Homer's Iliad. Their harmonious community resembled Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, but its laws had been established by Homer himself, a wandering sage versed in Greek, Persian, and Hebrew philosophy, as well as Christianity avant la lettre" (Haugen in ODNB). view more...
London: J.G. for Nath. Brook, at the Angel in Corn-hill, 1659.
[Amsterdam: Louis et Daniel Elzevier,] 1663.
Madrid: for Melchor San[che]z, acosta de Gabriel de Leon, 1653.
Madrid: for Maria de Quiñones at the expense of Pedro Coello, bookseller, 1635.
A very rare and early edition of Quevedo's translation and defence of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, containing both the additional emblematic engraved title-page and a full-page portrait of Quevedo, both by Jan Van Noort. The additional title states that this issue is "mas bien correxido" and this is probably the second edition, printed very shortly after the first in 1635: the work was licensed by both the Holy Office and Society of Jesus in October 1634 and first printed early in 1635. Our edition was licensed in March 1635. The first edition was apparently issued without the engraved plates.Quevedo was one of the principal exponents of neo-stoicism in the European renaissance, influenced by his correspondents Justus Lipsius and Pierre Charron. Here he provides a short life of Epictetus, a translation of the Manual of Epictetus and an important defence of the stoic philosophy: Nombre, Origen, Intento, Recomendacion, Descendencia de la doctrina Estoica, desiendese Epicuro de las Calumnia vulgares. He attempts to link the stoic doctrine to biblical theology: noting the semitic origins of the founder of this philsophy, Zeno and claiming that the biblical account of Job's heroic endurance in the face of adversity was the inspiration behind Stoic philosophy. The engraved title is notable. The central cartouche is held before the figure of Epictetus himself, who holds a lamp and book while receiving visible inspiration from the celestial figure of Job. One either side are the figures of Hercules and Ulysses, both archetypal "stoics". Each of the four corners of the plate bears a medallion portrait: Zeno, Cleanthes, Seneca and Socrates. The portrait of Quevedo is equally engaging: he is shown as a relatively young man, without his habitual "pince nez" (from which is derived the Spanish word for such lenses: "quevedos"), he is surrounded by palms and below is a quotation from Ovid, below that are the emblems of a lion, a snake and an eagle with the motto "Omnia simul". The whole is surrounded by a border of flowers.The Epictetus is one of a cluster of Quevedo's works to appear in 1635, a moment of crisis in his career. A disastrous forced marriage in 1634 lasted only a few months, and it is tempting to see Quevedo's burst of creative endeavour (especially as regards Stoicism) as a response to this. More seriously, his rather numerous detractors seem to have been queuing up to slander Quevedo. Later in 1635 a defamatory work published in Valencia proved a serious setback: El tribunal de la justa venganza, erigido contra los escritos de Francisco de Quevedo, maestro de errores, doctor en desvergüenzas, licenciado en bufoner'as, bachiller en suciedades, catedrático de vicios y protodiablo entre los hombres. It was not until 1639 that Quevedo was finally arrested, his books confiscated, and his committal to the convent of San Marcos in León. view more...
Amsterdam: Henri Desbordes, 1697.
London: for the Company of Stationers, 1665.
The classic treatise on the laws and lore of England's ancient forests, replete with information on the management of woodlands and hunting-grounds. Manwood explains the origins of forest laws and their operation in the customary courts and gives charters from the time of King Canute (AD 1016) onwards. He also provides a host of arcane detail, such as the vocabulary of the forester: "A Hart belloweth; a Buck growneth; a Roe belleth; a Boar sreameth; a Hare, or a Cony beateth or tappeth; a Fox barketh; a wolfe howleth..." Hunting and hawking rights are especially well treated. Manwood was variously a barrister and Lincoln's Inn, a gamekeeper of Waltham Abbey and Justice of the New Forest, making him peculiarly well-qualified as a compiler of forest law."Compiled and printed in 1592 (at first for private circulation)... The first published edition of this excellent work, much enlarged and improved, appeared in 1598, London, 4to; 2nd edit. 1599, 4to. A new and enlarged edition was published in 1615 with... [our] title... ; reprinted, London, 1665..." (DNB). view more...
[Amsterdam: "Richt Right" press,] "printed in the yeare that the bishops had their downfall in Scotland," [1638].
London: [by William and Stansby and Elliot's Court Press,] "ex officina Nortoniana, apud Joannem Billum," 1616.
Paris: Guillaume Desprez, 1675.
First and only edition of this very scarce astronomical work written in an enthusistically Cartesian vein. Dedicated to the gentlemen of the Académie Royale des Sciences, Le système du monde rehearses (with the help of diagrams) the basic Ptolemaic and Copernican theories of the universe and then pursues a more sophisticated enquiry into the nature of planetary motion according to Copernicus, Galileo and Descartes. "Claude Gadroys (1642-1678) believed that Descartes has discovered a new world as truly as Columbus and others had discovered America. Although he professed not to accept the explanations of Descartes on every point, he did adopt his theory of tourbillons or vortices, his three elements or kinds of particles of matter, and his three laws that everything remains in the state it is, so long as nothing changes it, that a body in movement tends to continue to move in a straight line, and that bodies moving in circles try to break away from the centre of their movement" (Thorndike). The work is devoid of Newtonian influence (Newton's already formulated theories of gravitation remaining unpublished in 1675).Our copy is bibliographically interesting in containing alternative settings of several leaves. The first of these (pp. 87-8, given in two versions) apparently derives from a decision taken while the work was in the press to remove the rather rudimentary Copernican diagram from p. 87 and to alter the wording of the surrounding text. Our copy gives both versions, which makes for some confusion in the ordering of the text, but provides an insight into authorial and editorial practice in a work with an extensive scheme of diagrams. The alternative setting of pp. 271-6, which appear out of order, are harder to explain, but again there are variances between the texts of the two versions.Gadroys had earlier published a work entitled Discours sur les influences des astres (1671) which considered the claims of astrology in the light of the philosophy of Descartes. He refers the reader to this work in his brief treament of astrology towards the end of the present work. view more...
Leyden: Elzevir Press, 1638.
First edition of this famous work in urology, one of the earliest medical books to accept William Harvey's account of the circulation of the blood. Beverwyck was a Dutch physician and a relative of Vesalius. He sent a copy of this work to Harvey with a letter praising him for his work on circulation, saying "As everyone here wonderingly admires this doctrine, so I too embrace it both both arms in the little book which I send 'On the calculus of the kidneys and the bladder'". Harvey replied at length, praising the work with the punning passage: "Pleasing me, learned and elegant, and truly original, your De calculo renum et vesicae, in which you have laid a firm and solid foundation for your name and fame; go on to build further day by day, and erect a splendid monument of your genius. I will, not unwillingly, add my stone..." He went on to provide a detailed and approving critique of Beverwyk's work on the operation of the kidneys. view more...
'Amsterdam: Joannem Blaeu' [but probably Paris,] 1668.
Leyden: Bonaventure & Abraham Elzevir, 1643.
* Given as a guide only. Based on an exchange rate of £1 = US$1.944696 for the day 16 May 2008 but liable to fluctuate.
16 May 2008
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