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Velcurio’s popular textbook of Aristotelian physics, printed at Lyon by Louis Cloquemin and Étienne Michel, here with an early English binding and provenance.

Johannes Velcurio or Johannes Bernhardi of Feldkirch (1490-1534) was professor of rhetoric and physics at the university of Wittenberg, where he was a humanist colleague of Melanchthon. This posthumously published Commentarium on Aristotle’s physics first appeared in Tubingen in 1542 and ran to at least twenty five editions before 1595, including those from in Basel, Erfurt, Cologne, Tübingen, Strasbourg, Wittenberg, Lyon, and London. The fourth book is devoted to Aristotle’s De anima. In England, as elsewhere it was used as a university textbook and appears, for example, among the small textbooks purchased by students at Cambridge (see P. Gaskell, Books bought by Whitgift’s Pupils in the 1570s, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 7, 3 (1979), pp. 284-293). It is unclear who the ‘John Freeman’ who inscribed the title-page in Greek at an early date was, but several John Freemans appear in the Cambridge University registers in the last years of the sixteenth century.

The binding bears identical blindstamped centrepiece tools to a contemporary London binding illustrated by David Pearson in English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800 as Fig 3.35 (BL 1492.f.43, Selneccer, Evangeliorum et epistolarum dominicalium, Frankfurt, 1575) with similar spine bands and blind-ruled borders. At the front and rear are two endleaves (each) using waste apparently from an unidentified edition of Justinian’s Institutes, each with further early notes (mainly pen tests).

First edition, much extending and improving Smart’s earlier work of 1707, Tables of simple Interest and Discount. Dedicated to the governor or the Bank of England, William Thompson, his deputy, Humphrey Morice and the bank’s directors, they proved to be among the most used tables of interest of the eighteenth century. There were two further printings in 1747 and 1780. Included are tables of simple and compound interest, discount as well as tables to calculate the value of annuities on lives and numerous worked examples of their use. It concludes with a survey of the history of British currency and coinage, which includes consideration of unlawful usury and coin clipping, as well as other legal considerations. In the 1707 Tables of simple Interest and Discount Smart described himself as of ‘the Town Clerk’s office, London’, whereas by 1726 he could describe himself as ‘of Guildhall, Gent.’ Other sources show he was Clerk to H. M. Commissioners of Lieutenancy for the City of London, 1714-1739, and Deputy Town Clerk until his death in 1742. Of Tables of Interest, Discount, Annuities, McCulloch wrote in his 1871 Dictionary of Commerce: ‘They are carried to 8 decimal places, and enjoy the highest character, both here and on the Continent, for accuracy and completeness. The original work is now become very scarce.’ The work also holds a significant place in the history of actuarial science, since he noted in his discussion of annuities the need for accurate tables of mortality and the systematic recording of ages of death by parish clerks (p. 113), a recommendation that was soon adopted for bills of mortality, at least in London.

The owner of this copy, Thomas Best (1753-1815), was part of the wealthy Best brewing family of Kent, was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and became an officer in the West Kent militia. Goldsmiths’ 6485; Kress 3666.

First edition of this souvenir account of a balloon ascent and parachute descent made by the pioneering French aeronaut, Élisa Garnerin, in Italy. An early pioneer of parachuting, Élisa had already made numerous drops in Paris and further afield in France, her performances often attracting enormous crowds. More than any other contemporary woman, it might be said without undue irony that her career was one of ups and downs — her celebrity as a balloonist and parachutist met with considerable opposition from the police, who found the crowds she drew to be troublesome, and her business probity was frequently questioned by her associates.

The illustrations in this pamphlet include a version of her circular portrait by Bouchardy made in Paris using the physionotrace apparatus invented by Gille-Louis Chrétien designed to copy physical features and simultaneously reduce them to an engraved plate. The folding plate shows Élisa borne aloft in an elegant gondola beneath her balloon, and then the gondola released from the balloon for her parachute descent.

First editions of two rare satires purporting to offer spectacles for the short-sighted. Other than that the two works couldn’t be more different, both in tone or content.

The most significant is the Lunette pour une vuë courte apparently almost unrepresented in European or American library collections. Pseudonymous (’by a northern optician’) and with a false St Petersburg imprint it is a virulent rebuttal of the natural philosophy of Jean-Baptiste Robinet, encyclopédiste and proto-evolutionist. The work under the satirist’s lenses is Robinet’s Vue philosophique de la gradation naturelle des formes de l’étre (Amsterdam, 1768) in which the author had expounded part of his theory of the advance of nature via an active principle common to all forms, from stones to complex plants and animals. Like several other Enlightenment precursors Robinet contributed to the history of evolutionary thought later crystallised by Darwin. He envisaged links between all natural forms, only temporarily invisible, all subject to an active process of refinement and development. Our Lunetier-satirist was having none of it and dismissed the work as a tissue of bizarre dreams and a monstrous production that could only be dismissed by humour. In particular he singles our for ridicule Robinet’s discussions of shells which seem imitate female genitalia (Concha veneris) and fossil stones (priapolites) resembling the male.

The other work is a cautionary and resolutely anti-feminst verse romp through the perils facing the modernday Everyman (’Quidam’) in Paris where the vices of women lurk at every corner to ensnare him. No copy of Lunette pour une vuë courte, ou Bagatelle historico-physico-morale llocated in Worldcat. Lunettes a éclaircir la vue: Gay II, 921.

First edition. An influential astronomy tutor which ran to several editions. ‘In August 1835 Main was appointed chief assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory under Sir George Airy, whom he served with loyalty and efficiency for twenty-five years... Main succeeded Johnson as Radcliffe observer on 19 June 1860, and resided at Oxford from 1 October 1860’. He made significant observations in both posts (notably on Venus, Saturn and fixed stars), presenting his findings to the Royal Astronomical Society. At Oxford he compiled and edited the second Radcliffe catalogue of stars and he has craters named after him on both the moon and Mars.

First edition. Boydell’s tables allowed dealers in beer, wine and spirits to accurately assess the true contents of part-used casks through measurement of ullage (the empty portion of any barrel) — an essential calculation in tax and excise assessments. Several new editions were advertised in the nineteenth-century but all editions are rare.
The author was probably the same Boydell who described himself as ‘ships-husband’ on the title of his The Merchant Freighter’s and Captains of Ships Assistant - Being Tables Calculated with the Greatest Accuracy (‘London: printed for the author... and to be had at Lloyd's, the New York, the New England, the Jamaica, and the Pensylvania coffee-houses; and of any bookseller in Great Britain, 1764). ESTC: Leeds, NLS, Glasgow, St Andrews, U Kentucky, UVA, Saint Olaf (MN) and State Library of Tasmania.

One of Heath’s famous graphic satires on the theme of The March of Intellect, which expressed contemporary anxiety over technological progress and social change in England brought about by science, education, industrialisation and commercialisation. This one shows a London street corner at the edge of open country and the sea, with numerous figures, including a street-sweeper, horse-drawn carriage, two men playing chess, musicians and singers and street-sellers, with wealthy figures being sent down a mechanical lift beside giant shop window stuffed with milliner. A steam carriage full of redcoat soldiers is seen in background, along with passenger balloons and a flying warship (raining canon-fire at ships below) in the air beside bridge crossing the English Channel between Dover and Calais.

First edition of this observational survey of the solar system, including the earliest accurate maps of the surface of Mars, establishing the discipline of aerography (a derivation form ‘Ares’ the Greek god of Mars). Wilhelm Beer and Johan Mädler made systematic telescopic observations of Mars from 1830, the year in which the planet passed closest to earth. Their goal was to refine Herschel’s calculations of its period of rotation — just over 24 hours — which had prompted speculation about the red planet’s similarities to our own. In doing so they made a close survey of spots and other markings, trying to understand those which might give clues to the composition of the Martian surface and those which were atmospheric and created the drawings on which the Mars plates in the Fragments were prepared. They were accurate enough to plainly ‘distinguish the two most notable features of Mars Syrtis Major (looking like India), and Lacus Solis (looking like a large eye)’ (Ashworth, Linda Hall website https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/wilhelm-beer/). The multiple small diagrams of Mars on 6 plates appear for the first time, while the larger double-hemisphere plate had previously appeared in a journal article in Astronomische Nachrichten of 1838. The book was published in German in 1841 as Beiträge zur physischen Kenntniss der himmlischen Körper im Sonnensysteme. Both authors contributions are commemorated with Martian craters named after them.
Houzeau and Lancaster 1332.

First edition of an ingenious perpetual calendar, serviceable to the year 2000. and including a folding engraved lunar chart. The preface suggests its utility to ‘l’Homme d’État, le Magistrat, l’Homme de Lettres, le Particulier même’. Duplessis was a map publisher, who also issued a variety of calendars. The advert after the preface offers geographical and historical maps and charts, a large map of France on 175 sheets but also calendar mounted on card with elaborate engraved borders which could be supplied glazed in gilt frames. No US or UK copies in Worldcat.

First edition. The 1714 Longitude Act was established the Board of Longitude and offered monetary rewards for anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship’s longitude. It was modified in several subsequent Acts, including the present, making another £2000 pounds available for experimentation and recording that John Harrison had received £1250 for his initial determinations.

Though separately published with a general title for a complete sitting of Parliament, individual Acts of Parliament were paginated to be bound together in yearly volumes hence the pagination 399-403 here.

An ingenious calculator aimed at a juvenile audience.

FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH, translated (with substantial additions) from Rowley’s Medical Advice for the Army and Navy in the present American Expedition (London, 1776). The translator, Casimir Marcassus-Puymaurin of Toulouse, explains in a preface that he was inspired to publish by the success of that book in England but also because the similarity of the climate of Georgia and Carolina considered by the army surgeon Rowley and the climate of summer in the south of France. Worldcat lists the University of Toulouse copy only.

A popular commonplace book verse in the nineteenth century, it was included in The World’s Best Poetry in 1904 with the caption ‘The MS. of this poem, which appeared in 1820, was said to have been found in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, near a perfect human skeleton. It was published in the Morning Chronicle. The author was never discovered, although a reward of fifty guineas was offered.’

‘BEHOLD this ruin! ’Twas a skull
Once of ethereal spirit full.
This narrow cell was Life’s retreat;
This space was Thought’s mysterious seat.
What beauteous visions filled this spot!
What dreams of pleasure long forgot!
Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear
Has left one trace of record here...’

First edition. The Language of Botany was reprinted in 1796. Martyn was Cambridge professor of botany for sixty-three years and the first reader of botany following the foundation of the Cambridge botanical garden. Henrey, British botanical and horticultural Literature before 1800, 1026

First edition of this copiously illustrated treatise on chiromancy, physiognomy and astrology, which includes three fine woodcuts by Hans Baldung, former apprentice to Albrecht Dürer. They are: the large title portrait of the author, the final full-page decorative arms and one physiognomical diagram of a man and a woman (p. 5 in the second part) — all three show clear echoes of Dürer’s style. The book was printed for the author, who was an adviser to Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, the dedicatee (it was to Cardinal Albert that Martin Luther had addressed his 95 Theses in 1517).
Indagine (1467-1537) was a Carthusian prior and humanist theologian who saw no conflict between orthodox faith and the occult sciences. The book was widely read across Europe and frequently reprinted, with a small format octavo edition from Frankfurt in the same year, a vernacular German edition appearing the following year, and an English translation in 1558 (with at least 12 more editions in English before 1700). It was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559.
Though we have been unable to identify the early owner of this copy, whose monogram appears on each cover, the early inscription is from Rainold, Marquis of Canhilac (Languedoc). Adams I 88; VD16 R 3108; Mende, Hans Baldung Grien, 458-460. Worldcat: Cambridge, Leeds, Folger (portrait mostly lacking), Duke, Princeton (2 copies, one lacking a leaf), Philadelphia College of Physicians, UCLA outside continental Europe.

The short article plays on Banks’s youthful reputation at Oxford, his curiosity for the natural world and his experiences in the South Seas: ‘As nature has been his constant study, it cannot be supposed that the most engaging part of it, the fair sex, have escaped his notice; and if we may be suffered to conclude from his amorous descriptions, the females of most of the countries he has visited, have undergone every critical inspection by him...’� The plate is described in BM Satires 5146.

First edition of this important act acknowledging the success of John Harrison’s ‘H4’ chronometer in the accurate calculation of longitude, among the most important scientific breakthroughs of the eighteenth century. ‘And whereas the Utility of the Invention of the said John Harrison has been proved by a late Voyage to Jamaica, under the Directions of the Commissioners of the Longitude; And whereas the said Commissioners at their Meeting on the Seventeenth Day of August last did adjudge, that by the Trial made of the said Instrument, it was found of considerable Use to the Publick, and did thereupon make an Order for the Payment of the Sum of Two thousand Pounds to the said John Harrison...’

Harrison believed the extraordinary accuracy of his fourth marine chronometer (it lost just five seconds on an 81-day trial to Jamaica) should be enough to win the full £20,000 promised by the British government’s 1714 longitude prize, but the ‘Act for the Encouragement’ insisted on further tests and disclosures. ‘It was intended to enforce the Commissioners’ directions that Harrison make “a full and clear Discovery of the Principles” of his latest timekeeper to eleven named witnesses so that the details could be published in order to allow other clockmakers to reproduce the designs. Once these witnesses or the majority of them certified that Harrison had done so, then the Treasurer of the Navy was to pay the clockmaker £5000...’ (Baker). The 1763 Act for the Encouragement is the first official government acknowledgement that the revolutionary H4 chronometer had succeeded, but it took Harrison most of the rest of his life to extract the prize money from the Board of Longitude, despite his publication of An Account of the Proceedings in order to the Discovery of Longitude in 1763 (see Printing and the Mind of Man, 208).

Several copies of this act have appeared at auction in recent years (notably the Streeter Library copy sold by Christie’s in New York for $14,400 in 2007) almost always physically disbound from complete sessional volumes of the Acts of Parliament. Though separately published with a general title (as here) individual acts were almost always bound together in yearly volumes as their pagination dictated — our copy is preserved in such a yearly volume with 24 other acts. Acts of this era were printed in limited numbers, usually estimated at around 1100 copies only. Baker, ‘Longitude Acts’ in Longitude Essays, Cambridge Digital Library, accessed June 2021. ESTC records just 8 copies of the act (3 in the UK, 5 in the US) and Worldcat adds a small handful more, though copies are under-recorded since they are often (especially in the UK) catalogued within volumes and sets of the Acts of Parliament.

A RARE FRENCH BROADSIDE ADVERTISING THE VIRTUES OF ‘SCOTCH PILLS’ OR ‘GRANA ANGELICA’ invented by the seventeenth-century Edinburgh physician Patrick Anderson, a medical treatment which remained popular in Scotland, England and France well into the nineteenth century. The long text in twelve chapters outlines the supposed virtues of the pills as a cure for almost any complaint. This French version imitates the English broadsides of the second half of the eighteenth century (there are several in ESTC) which themselves mimicked the form of Royal proclamations with woodcut arms at the head. It also reproduces the purported trademark of Anderson and his successor Isabelle Inglish, which seems to have been pirated as often as the pills themselves.

‘Some time after 1625 Anderson was appointed physician to Charles I. In 1635 he published in Edinburgh Grana angelica, a treatise in Latin which puffed his mild aperient pills, made with aloes, colocynth, and gamboge, and pronounced a sovereign remedy for cleansing the system after carouses. Anderson claimed to have brought the formula of the pill back from a trip to Venice about 1603’. (Oxford DNB).

A rare and amusing satire on the practice of acupunture ― much in vogue among certain Parisian doctors in the early nineteenth century. A sickly male patient is receiving a doctor’s needles, the longest of which is seemingly destined for his heart; a young woman in a bonnet seems unimpressed with her needles (one pierces her tongue); while a young man throws down a set of crutches. On the wall behind hangs a painting of the martrydom of Saint Sebastian. Though known in France since the seventeenth century, acupuncture was revived in the decades after 1800 — Doctor Louis-Joseph Berlioz (1776–1858, the composer’s father) claimed to have used it successfully in 1810 and published a paper on the subject, while Jules Cloquet published his influential Traité de l’acupuncture in 1826.
The print was listed in the Bibliographie de France for 1825 (p. 172). It was published by Mantoux and Cheyère (cf. the Paris Musée Carnavalet copy) though in our example Mantoux’s name has been cancelled in the imprint line.

A curious florilegium, with extensive lithographed devotional text, presumably after the handwriting of author (’Jean, prêtre’) and a series of handcoloured lithographs. The latter include 31 of flowers (marigold, violet, primula, iris, cornflower, honeysuckle etc) which are paired with a description and devotional meditation on the opposite page. The others depict a hermit, a memento mori, a decorative contents list and (at the end) women in a religious procession with a banner. At least one them is signed ‘Jean’. The prefatory text is from Chateaubriand’s Le Martyrs: ‘En achevant ces mots, Zacharie s’arrêta, me montra le ciel où nous devions nous retrouver un jour, et, sans me laisser le temps de me jeter à ses pieds, il me quitta après m’avoir donné sa dernière leçon. C’est ainsi que Jésus-Christ dont il imite l’exemple, se plaisoit à instruire ses disciples, en se promenant au bord du lac de Génésareth, et faisoit parler l'herbe des champs et le lis de la vallée’.

Although marked ‘Deposé’ on the first leaf, we have been unable to find any other copies or record of its publication. It was presumably printed in very small numbers.