Seventeenth Century
Leyden: Bonaventure & Abraham Elzevir, 1643.
'Amsterdam: Joannem Blaeu' [but probably Paris,] 1668.
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...
'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.
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...
[Amsterdam: "Richt Right" press,] "printed in the yeare that the bishops had their downfall in Scotland," [1638].
Amsterdam: Joannem Blaeu, 1655.
Bratislava: Joh. Adam. Kästneri, 1680 [but probably 1683].
Paris: Denys Thierry and Christophle Ballard, 1681.
London: by M.F. for John Marriot, 1633.
London: E. Horton for T Sawbridg, 1685.
London: Roger Daniel and John Redmayne, 1659.
Toul: Sebastien Philippe, 1614.
Paris: Laurent d'Houry, 1696.
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...
Paris: Pierre Aubouin, Pierre Emery, et Charles Clouzier, 1688.
London: for Philemon Stephens, [1636].
London: for Tho[mas] Newcomb, and are to be sold by Humphrey Moseley, 1655.
Oxford: [University Press], 1676.
First edition, illustrated with engravings by Michael Burgers, an exceptional engraver and draughtsman, who enjoyed a virtual monopoly in engraving for Oxford University during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and by 1694 had been appointed official calcographus academicus. Prideaux's catalogue of the Arundel, Selden and other marbles is somewhat flawed as a work of scholarship, having been completed in a hurry and drawing heavily on early works, and was later described by Hearne as 'wonderfully defective, and what the Dr. was now asham'd of, at least as to the transcribing part' (T. Hearne, Remarks and Collections). Hearne recalled: "When he published this useful work he was very young, and had more regard, and thought it more for the honour of himself, to write long notes, than to take accurate copies of the several inscriptions. I am informed that he has become highly sensible of this neglect, and for that reason does not care to discourse with anyone about the edition. However, what he did is prodigious, and far beyond his years." (Letters written by eminent persons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 1813.) view more...
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...
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...
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...
Rouen: pour la Societé, 1666.
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" (Till in Oxford DNB).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 and Samuel Gorton. view more...
Amsterdam: Henri Desbordes, 1697.
London: J.G. for Nath. Brook, at the Angel in Corn-hill, 1659.
First edition. The letters and poems of Robert Loveday were published posthumously by his brother Anthony in 1659 and subsequently reprinted several times. Loveday's education at Peterhouse, Cambridge, was interrupted by the Civil War and he became a secretary in the Clinton family; in this capacity he travelled extensively throughout England, spending time at the Clintons' seat, Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire, and at the Clares' residence, Thurland House, Nottinghamshire. Loveday was an accomplished translator whose most notable work was a three-volume translation of La Calprenède's Cléopâtre; however it is arguably his letters which remain his greatest legacy. By all accounts an unusually charming and attractive personality (even the running title reads 'Loveday's Letters. The Perswasive Secretary'), Loveday's agreeable style may be illustrated by a touching display of fraternal love which he pays his brother: "I am deep in your debt for abundance of loving expressions, and want words to tell you how tenderly I entertained them; the task is too big to let you know how dear you are to me; do me but the Courtesie to fancy an affection, pure, unbiassed, unreserved, that scorns limits, loaths change, and is onely less excellent than that which makes Angels clap their wings". view more...
Bologna: Nicoló Tebaldini, 1638.
Francis Willughby's copy of the fourth edition (first 1613). Ulisse Aldrovandi's unprecedented survey of the fish species was conceived as part of the author's extraordinarily ambitious project to build the first complete 'scientific' zoological encyclopedia. Only two of the parts, the Ornithology and De Animalibus Insectis, were published during his lifetime, whilst De Piscibus was edited by his pupils from his manuscripts. Aldrovandi's concern with actual observation and with descriptions from specimens, explicit in the building of his own museum of natural history, became compelling when the naturalist met Guillaume Rondelet in Rome, where the French physician was collecting specimens for his own work. The two spent days examining species in Rome's fish market, and the Italian naturalist started gathering material for what became one of the greatest collections of his time. As a scientist of the l6th century, Aldrovandi was necessarily dependent, for the parts related to exotic species, on the accounts of earlier or foreign naturalists, in particular Gesner, Salviati, Belon and Rondelet. Nevertheless, his study is the first complete ichthyological work which attempts to substitute, correct and integrate the received traditional literature with as much direct observation as possible, in the spirit of a new, modern scientific and experimental attitude. The scientific and demonstrative approach emerges particularly in the care and abundance of illustrative apparatus, which the author conceived as necessary complement to the text rather than as an ornamental addition.Francis Willughby (1635-1672), one of the foremost naturalists to come before Linnaeus owned and marked this copy, evidently in the course of the preparation of his own De Historia Piscium (1686). The unique weight of Aldrovandi's influence on the major subsequent works on natural history, culminating in Linnaeus's monumental survey, is evident in this association copy. view more...
Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1686.
First edition of Willughby's monumental Historia piscium, a project designed to follow his celebrated Ornithologia (1676). Willughby (1635-1720), author of some of the most important contributions in natural history before those of Linnaeus, toured the Continent extensively with John Ray, collecting material for his research and observing specimens to be reproduced in his drawings. He died before publishing his studies on fish. The large editorial work was undertaken by Ray, the renowned naturalist who had carried out extensive experimental work in embryology and plant physiology, a member of the Royal Society of London since 1667. Ray brought his taxonomy system to bear on Willughby's descriptions. Although broadly based on Aristotle's classification, it relied on anatomical and functional features, and was the first system based on the notion of species in the distinction of diverse animals and plants.The exceptional collection of plates is known in two editorial states, one with engravings on both recto and verso of each leaf, the second engraved on recto only. This copy has 'state b' plates, and the title-page which is sometimes bound before the plates is here bound at the beginning. view more...
"Paris: Girard", n.d. [c.1668.]
An attractive seventeenth-century military manuscript, a very early copy of Chastelet's Traité de la Guerre, neatly executed, and conforming to the pagination of the first printed edition quite precisely - the printed version containing 277 pages. A later bibliographical note to the endpaper asserts that this must "sans aucune doute" be Giard's manuscript for his edition. This is perhaps unlikely: early manuscript copies of hard-to-come-by imprints are an important (if under-appreciated) aspect of the contemporary circulation of new books.Chastelet's treatise (dedicated to the King) covers all aspects of war: types of troops, garrisons, ranks, invasion, battle, morale, treatment of casualties, defence, sieges, sea warfare, civil wars, discipline, military law, espionage and treaties. view more...
London: [n.p.], printed in the year. 1691.
Paris: Claude Barbin, 1691.
London: Matthew Gillyflower, 1697.
A very rare French edition (albeit with "Londres" imprint) of Halifax's Advice to Betty, a counsel for young ladies of high birth on how to behave and manage themselves despite the prevailing inequalities of the sexes. Halifax wrote the book for his young daughter and it was only intended to be privately circulated; however, a pirated edition appeared in 1688 as The Ladies New-Year's Gift, or, Advice to a Daughter and by 1765 it had reached its fifteenth numbered edition, with translations also appearing in French and Italian. An edition with the imprint "chez Jaques Partridge à Charing-Cross, & Matieu Gilliflower dans Westminster-Hall", had appeared in 1692, and ESTC does not list this 1697 edition. Bound with the probable first edition of La Chalotais' revolutionary programme for an enlightened public system of education. The Essai was praised by Voltaire and was widely reprinted in its first year. Several issues are dated 1763, and ours is usually (though not bibliographically certainly) considered the first. La Chalotais was instrumental in dismantling the apparatus of Jesuit education in France, and his programme is his proposal for its replacement. Based on the acquisition of reason before the considerations of religion, the system divides education into primary (up to 10 years) and secondary phases and he here considers the relative merits of letters, history, geography, natural history, mathematics, physics (including astronomy and mechanics), literature, logic and metaphysics. Any study of religion is confined to a tertiary phase. view more...
London: for Humphrey Moseley, 1648.
First edition, second issue, giving the date '1648'. Keynes suggests that the work was first published in 1647, since although it is undated, it first appears in the Stationers' Register in the autumn of 1646. The second issue uses the unsold sheets of that first issue with a cancel title.Donne frankly admits his fascination for the act of suicide in his Preface "...whensoever any affliction assailes me, mee thinks I have the keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presentes it selfe so soone to my heart, as mine own sword." He chose not to publish his meditations on the subject and only circulated the Biathanatos among friends in manuscript. He sent a copy to Sir Edward Herbert, and, in 1619, another to Sir Robert Karre, writing: "It was written by me many years since; and because it is upon a misinterpretable subject, I have always gone so near suppressing it, nor many eyes to read it: onely to some particular friends in both Universities, then when I writ it, I did communicate it: And I remember, I had this answer, That certainly, there was a false thread in it, but not easily found: Keep it, I pray, with the same jealousie; let any that your discretion admits to the sight of it, know the date of it; and that it is a Book written by Jack Donne, and not by D. Donne: Reserve it for me, if I live, and if I die, I only forbid it the Presse, and the Fire: publish it not, but burn it not; and between those, do what you will with it'"(cited by Keynes). It was published posthumously by John Donne the younger, and dedicated by Lord Herbert's sone Phillip. view more...
Frankfurt: Jacob Gothofred Seyler, 1673.
Probably from the collection of Isaac Newton: a collection of treatises on hermetic and magical philosophy. The volume contains no obvious marks of Newton's ownership (inscriptions in his hand, dog-earing etc) but it contains the shelf-marks and engraved bookplate of James Musgrave. It does not contain the Huggins bookplate and does not appear in the first listing of Newton's library made after his death for Huggins. However, in view of the subject matter it is quite likely to have been Newton's copy: since not all of his books came to have the Huggins plate and many books later proved to be Newton's were not listed in Huggins's inventory.The dispersal of Newton's library after his death was definitively recounted by John Harrison. Dying intestate, most of Newton's books were rapidly sold to John Huggins, Warden of the Fleet Prison and installed in the house of his third son, Charles Huggins at Chinnor Rectory. They later passed, with the house, by marriage to Dr James Musgrave who later moved (with his library) in 1778 to Barnsley Park in Gloucestershire. There they remained, largely undisturbed, before dispersal at auction in the early part of the twentieth-century.Books demonstrably from Newton's library have been recognised through a variety of means: notably the contemporary lists compiled of both the Huggins and Musgrave libraries, but also from the bookplates and shelf-marks they contain, and, occasionally from Newton's own annotations and trade-mark "dog-earing" of corners. Our little Longinus, in its early to mid-eighteenth century binding contains no obvious Newtonian markings and did not appear in the first listings listings of Newton's library made by Huggins and does not contain a Huggins bookplate. It does however contain two sets of Musgrave's markings (the Chinnor and Barnsley Park shelf-marks) plus Musgrave's distinctive bookplate.As Harrison points out, while Huggins' first list is the most useful of all the lists of Newton's books, it does have limitations, especially in relation to smaller books in octavo or duodecimo and volumes with multiple contents (tracts). A good number of books known to have been Newton's appear in the Musgrave list only but are missing from the Huggins list. While most larger books were fully listed, smaller books were far less accurately recorded. For example, Harrison cites the entry "3 Dozen of small chymical books", among which a volume such as ours could easily have passed unrecognised. Furthermore, such an arcane hermetic text is highly unlikely to have been added to the library from elsewhere by either Huggins or Musgrave. Certainly Musgrave added books (perhaps as many as 130 volumes) but these tended to be on more general non-scientific subjects. "The great majority of the doubtful books are theological (particularly sermons), and the rest comprise a few classical texts, works on modern history and biography, and works of English literature, together with a reference book or two" (Harrison p. 46). On the other hand, it is precisely the sort of book Newton had been reading avidly between c. 1670-90 (see Brewster, Newton Handbook, 11).The binding of the book is of interest, dating from the eighteenth rather than the seventeenth century. If we are correct in suggesting that the book had its origins among Newton's books then a rebinding must have taken place under the instruction of Musgrave while still at his house at Chinnor (the book's pastedown bears a Chinnor marking). It is known that Musgrave did oversee a degree of conservation and rebinding, especially among the flimsier tract volumes, though the style of our binding is quite different to these. The Longinus has not only been rebound, but has had its rather frayed title carefully repaired by backing on a blank leaf (not watermarked).In sum, the Musgrave markings and the subject matter strongly suggest Newton's earlier ownership, though, on present evidence, this cannot be definitively proved. A work was first published with this title in 1609, and again, in a form closer to our text in 1614. Thereafter it appeard in numerous editions throughout the seventeenth century. The first part considers the different varieties of magic with an added section on the medicinal and magical properties of plants, minerals and animals,;the second is a treatise on cures reputedly effected at a distance by means of the the "weapon salve" (unguento armaro); the third contains the oracles of Zoroaster in verse, and the mystic philosophy of the Hebrews, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Orphics and Pythagoreans in prose; and the final part, possibly added for this edition concerns the nature of the devil. view more...
Amsterdam: Paul marret, 1699.
Paris: Jacques Le Febvre, 1696.
Leyden: Pierre van de Aa, 1688.
[Madrid, 1674-1675.]
A superbly presented manuscript account book prepared by the clerk of one of Madrid's early hospitals for the poor and destitute. It comprises a full record of daily expenditure for the kitchen of the hospital over two years. Each day contains roughly fifteen entries for staple foods used in preparation of meals for the inmates, mainly for bread, meat, fowl, raisins, wine (red and white) and oil. Other entries are for fuel for cooking, herbs and spices (aniseed and parsley), bran, fish (occasional and seasonal), salads and fruit (also seasonal). Each day is divided into two sections: the first, untitled, represents general expenditure, the second, title "cena" evidently for dinner alone. Each expenditure is noted with amounts probably in maraved' and the totals for each day and week are given. Monthly totals are scrupulously prepared and presented at the end of each year's accounts and provide an interesting index of the fluctuation of expenditure across the seasons. It would be useful (and straightforward) to examine whether these related to seasonal price fluctuations or to some external factor such as the changing number of inmates. The accounts include the occasional purchase of quires of paper, presumably for accounts such as this.Each week at the hospital appears to have been presided over by a "semanero" whose names appear in turn beside the accounts for Sunday. Sundays appear to have witnessed the greatest expenditure, with notably larger amounts spent on the purchase of meat.The hospital was founded in the calle de Silva in 1594 alongside the church of Nuestra Señora de la Buena Dicha and was in the care of the Hermandad de la Buena Dicha. Its twelve rooms catered for the local destitute of the parish of S. Martin. view more...
London: for Nathanael Ponder, 1688.
London: A[nne].M[axwell]. and R[obert].R[oberts]. for Dorman Newman, at the Kings Arms in the Poultrey, 1682.
Paris: Gabriel Quinet, 1661.
* Given as a guide only. Based on an exchange rate of £1 = US$1.495795 for the day 10 March 2010 but liable to fluctuate.
10 March 2010