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First published in 1865 and hugely popular, this copy of the seventh edition is from the library of Napoleon III.

A seventeenth-century manuscript copy of Dubreuil’s La Perspective Pratique necessaire a tous peintres, graveurs, sculpteurs, architectes, orfevres, brodeurs, tapissiers, & autres se servans du dessein... première partie, first published in 1642. Evidently well-used, rebound in the nineteenth-century, and to judge from the binding, still handled and used thereafter, this is a large illustrated fragment consisting of parts 1, 2 and most of 3 (of 7) of the text. The original title-page and front matter, was replaced by a simple manuscript title, probably at the time of rebinding.

La Perspective Pratique, by Jean Dubreuil ‘the Jesuit’ (1602–1670) was popular among artists, architects and designers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was still being used by artists well into the nineteenth century as a practical introduction to perspective drawing. As the original title indicates it was intended for the use of painters, engravers, sculptors, goldsmiths, embroiderers and tapestry workers and had a very wide circulation, reprinted in numerous editions, including several in English. It proceeds from the principles of drawing simple shapes and solids in perspective, to specific objects such as chairs, tables, opening chests and shelving, then to buildings and townscapes. Each set of instructions is accompanied by detailed illustrations, which were widely copied. In the printed editions, these were presented as engraved plates opposite the letterpress text, but in this manuscript they are carefully incorporated into the text for ease of use. It seems to have been a practical handbook, extensively, but carefully handled (but not marked or annotated) over a long period of time.

Third edition (first 1771). Maude’s best-known work and a very popular poem, according to Aubin, who quotes from it extensively. The preface contains ‘his well considered observations on the nature of descriptive poetry... Like Crabbe, Maude fully realizes that the English bumpkin is too greatly harassed by cares to be the ideal poetic rustic.’ Jackson, p. 84. It occupies a curious place in the canon of works about Isaac Newton: apart from the plate depicting Newton’s paternal home, it represents the sole source for an oft-repeated anecdote of Newton’s rebuke to his pet dog Diamond (’Oh Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief done’) for upsetting a candle and burning his papers (Gjertsen, The Newton Handbook, p. 177). The anecdote is almost certainly apocryphal. Aubin, pp. 367; Jackson p, 84.

First edition of this important early treatise on the practical construction of the reflecting telescope. It is precisely contemporary with Robert Smith’s System of Opticks (also 1738) and both books share credit as the first manuals devoted to the construction of this instrument. Later editions, with the title Construction d’un telescope par reflexion de Mr. Newton, appeared in 1741 and 1756.

The reflecting telescope is generally attributed to Isaac Newton who built one in 1668. However, due to the extreme difficulty of producing mirrors of sufficient quality, his telescope was not widely adopted until the 1720s and 1730s when British instrument makers began to produce finely polished metal mirrors and the reflecting telescope became a practical reality for European astronomers. Passemant, one of the most celebrated instrument makers of his age, later Ingénieur du Roy, built several to the design depicted in the folding plate here. cf. Babson, Newton Collection, 157, (describing the 1741 edition only, now in the Huntington Library) ‘Passemant was a Frenchman who lived in Geneva and constructed not only telescopes, but also astronomical clocks and other instruments. This rare book contains many trade secrets’.

First edition in English of the Exercitatio Anatomica De Motu Cordis (1628) in which was described the discovery and proof of the circulation of the blood. ‘The most important book in the history of medicine. Harvey proved experimentally that in animals the blood is impelled in a circle by the beat of the heart, passing from arteries to veins through pores (i.e. the capillaries, seen by Malpighi with the microscope in 1660’ (Garrison & Morton). It should also be regarded as ‘the first record of a complete biological investigation, giving a clear and accurate description of the methods employed to recognise the laws governing an important vital process, a knowledge of which had till then been befogged by mistaken conceptions...’ (H.P. Bayon in Keynes).

Harvey’s hypothesis, like almost all revolutionary hypotheses, was initially very unpopular and was widely refuted. Harvey himself admitted that his career was nearly destroyed by the publication of De Motu Cordis. However, it is interesting that he was quickly vindicated and that the circulation of the blood became accepted as irrefutable medical fact within his own lifetime, albeit towards its end. This lifetime edition in English reflects that vindication. Keynes wrote of the text ‘It gives a vigorous if unpolished, rendering of Harvey’s book in contemporary language.’

The translation is from the Rotterdam edition and includes the additional commentaries by Zachariah Wood and James De Back. This edition also contains the first English translation of Exercitio anatomica de circulatione sanguinis (of which the first edition had appeared in Latin at Cambridge in 1649) again taken from the Rotterdam edition. This is an important text in its own right, providing a restatement of Harvey’s hypothesis concerning circulation supported by further experimental proof.

This is an unusually tall copy. In most copies the headlines, and sometimes even the top lines of the text, are shaved. In this copy none of the headlines is shaved, and on some leaves the lower edge is uncut. This copy has 11 of the 13 misprints (to pagination and signatures) listed by Keynes that were corrected as the book passed through the press. In addition, F3 is mis-signed F5. It is complete with the first blank leaf. Wing H1083. Cf G&M 759, Printing and the Mind of Man 127 (the first edition of 1628). Keynes, William Harvey, 19.

A rare satirical elegy and epitaph for the celebrated electrical eel, who could no longer rise to the occasion. A reissue of the sheets of the first edition of 1777 with a cancel title, of this elaborate addition to the corpus of salacious 1770s pamphlets devoted to the subject of the electrical eel, a topic of serious scientific enquiry and popular merriment. This one continues the phallic joke and manages to draw in the hapless Chevalier D’Eon (whose sex was then popularly debated) alongside the lecherous Earl of Harrington.

‘If the Gymnotus Electricus, lately exhibited to the Public, be really dead, it is to be hoped that we shall have no more of these witty indecencies’ (Monthly Review, Nov. 1777). ESTC: Harvard and Princeton only worldwide of this issue. ESTC gives the pagination [4], 29, [1], but both the 2 copies reported have only pp [2] before title, as here, though it is perhaps likely the work was issued with a half-title or initial blank not present in surviving copies.

First edition. An elegant new year gift book, comprising an illustrated survey of the popular French rose varieties, notes on culture and cultivation and a collection of rose poetry, completed with a calendar for the year 1819. The finely engraved plates are after Pancrace Bessa, a pupil and collaborator of Henri Redouté, painting tutor to the duchesse de Berry, and from 1823, replacing Redouté as official painter at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle. The book was reissued several times with added calendars for successive years. The varieties illustrated include: Grand cuisse de nymphe, Rose de Portland, Damas simple, Manteau d’Evêque and Rose Bichonne. Nissen 1266; Pritzel 6445.

First edition, rare, in its original gilt and glazed paper pictorial binding. Part of the Bibliothèque des Écoles Chrétiennes series, this copy from the celebrated collection of Colonel Milon (dispersed 1991). Cf. Tissandier 28 (second edition only). WorldCat lists a single copy of any edition, the 1894 ‘nouvelle édition’ (Harvard).

First edition. A refutation of the possibility of heavier-than-air flight as proposed by Nadar and his colleagues.

First edition, very rare, an early survey of the technology of flight before the advances of Godard, Nadar et al. Tissandier, p. 11. No copy located in OCLC.

Four rare perfume labels, colour printed ‘à la poupée’ with floral designs: Extrait de Rose et de Pois de senteur, Extrait de Jonquille, Extrait d’Oranges de Portugal, Extrait suave. The largest (Extrait de Rose includes a space below for a text or legend, uninked or cancelled in this example, but with traces of the engraved text visible. A charming and rare example of this colour printing technique in which each impression contains all the colours at once, with inks carefully applied to the plate with a cushion-headed tool (the ‘poupée’ or doll). The technique is immediately recognisable from the gentle gradations between the various colours of the resulting imprint.

First edition (a second appeared in 1788). ‘The book is a survey of existing information concerning various kinds of airs and the experiments and discoveries of Lavoisier, Priestley, Scheele and others.The author presents his ideas concerning the nature of gases (pure air, oxygen is the basis of all), phlogiston, heat, combustion, acidity (oxygen not the necessary constituent), etc.’ (Cole). ‘..all combustibles (including perhaps diamond) contain inflammable air, which he identified with phlogiston and thought it is contained in metals...He called oxygen ‘pure air’ and nitrogen (phlogisticated air) ‘impure air’. Pure air consists of vesicles inflated by the principle of heat. Nitrous air (nitrous oxide) is a compound of nitric acid and inflammable air or phlogiston. Fixed air, which he called ‘acid air’, can be converted into phlogisticated air or into pure air.’ (Partington). Cole, Chemical Literature 742; Partington, III, pp. 494-95; Wellcome III, 438a.

First edition of this comprehensive study of human fertility, infertility and artificial insemination. ‘Notre livre est surtout destiné aux familles qui sont désolées de rester sans enfants.’ A practical and populist approach to the scientific facts with an extraordinary sequence of vignettes by José Roy.

An excellent French herbier, the typical means of record for amateur naturalists in France, who seem to have preferred the specimen itself over a painted or drawn representation. Each plant is captioned with name, location and (sometimes) year of collection.

The naive but elegant watercolours here include ginger, eggplant, hot pepper, strawberry, mulberry, lily, carnation, marigold, vetch, hypericum and orchid.

Two provincial handbills, from Bedford and Sleaford, advertising ascents by pioneering balloonist Richard Gypson, who toured Britain and the Europe with his balloon.

First edition of this extraordinary treatise on the status of eunuchs in society, according to civil and canon law. Largely based on classical sources, history and (most interestingly) anecdotal evidence from the Orient, Ancillon considers the reasons for the phenomenon (including slavery, household, employment or punishment for sexual misdemeanour). The major contention is that while civil law permits a eunuch to marry, canon law should forbid it (as it did) on the grounds that a marriage could not be consummated. Along the way Ancillon recounts numerous anecdotes of famous eunuchs, notably Abelard, castrated at the instigation of Heloise’s family.

The book was later translated into English by Robert Samber as part of Edmund Curll’s Eunuchism display’d (1718).

This copy of Traité des Eunuques is one of at least two issues of the same year with slightly different paginations and title ornaments. The ‘Epitre dedicatoire’ is signed: ‘C. d’Ollincan’ an anagram of the author’s real name. Gay III, 1239.

This portrait is a naive interpretation of the classic image of Ramon Llull (c. 1232- c. 1315), Catalan mystic and mathematician. It is derived from the engraved portrait which first appeared in the seventeenth century Bibliotheca Chalcographia published by Jacques Boissard and Theodor de Bry in 1664.

First edition: a rare poem on the behaviour and cultivation of bees, copiously and diversely annotated with references to bees in Classical literature; crocodile anatomy; Jesuit activity in South America, etc. Murphy was a close friend of Samuel Johnson, also to the Thrales, to whose sixth child, Susanna Arabella, he dedicates the present work. British Bee Books 157. ESTC locates 9 copies, of which only three in America (Library Company of Philadelphia, Minnesota, Yale).

[bound with:]

—————. The English Garden: a Poem. Book the second... York: Printed by A. Ward; and sold by J. Dodsley... T. Cadell... and H. Denoyer... London; also by J. Todd... York. 1777. [and:]

—————. The English Garden: a Poem. Book the third... London: Printed by H. Goldney, for J. Dodsley... and T. Cadell... and sold by J. Todd... York. 1779. [And:]

—————. The English Garden: a Poem. Book the fourth... York Printed by A. Ward: and sold by J. Dodsley... T. Cadell... and R. Fauldner... London; and J. Todd, in York. 1781.

4 parts in one vol., 4to (255 × 203 mm), pp. [2], 35, [1]; [2], 33, [1]; 32; [2], 54, plus final blank; without the half-titles to second and third parts, the general title to the fourth part, and final advertisement leaf to the second part; some spotting in places; crease to title of first part; recent half leather, cloth sides.

Second edition of the first part, first editions of the other three. A rare collection, Mason’s ‘magnum opus, The English Garden (4 books, 1772–81), over 2400 lines of blank verse based on Virgil’s Georgics, a didactic poem concerning landscape, art, and gardening’ (Oxford DNB). The intersection of these three arts were a defining feature of late eighteenth-century aesthetics, Horace Walpole writing in 1773: ‘Poetry, Painting and Gardening, or the science of Landscape, will forever by men of Taste be deemed Three Sisters, or the “Three New Graces” who dress and adorn Nature’. Jackson, pp. 13, 53, 71, and 86; Gaskell 20, 24, and 26.