[Rarebooks] Offering: 1678 - BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED WORK ON UNICORNS

[Michael John Thompson]

ILLUSTRATED STUDY OF UNICORNS, BOTH REAL AND MYTHIC

BARTHOLIN, Thomas. De Unicorn Observationes Novae. Amsterdam: Westen. 1678.

12mo (5.5 x 3.5 inches). [14] + 381 + [15] pp + engraved frontispiece 
plate by de Hooghe) and one folding plate (5.25 x 12 inches) With 22 
text illustrations, including 19 full-page plates. Later (19th 
Century) half calf and marbled boards, joints rubbed and starting to 
split along the outer edge of the front hinge.

The second edition, revised and enlarged by the author's son, Caspar. 
First published in Padua in 1645, the second edition of  this 
detailed study on the unicorn - inspired by the presence of various 
fossilized horns - has more illustrations than the first edition, 
including the evocative mythological frontispiece engraving and the 
large folding plate of the decorative "unicorn" horn housed in the 
treasury of St. Denis. Thomas Bartholin (1616-1680) a professor of 
anatomy in Copenhagen with a passion for zoology, traveled throughout 
Europe, collecting specimens as well as legends. Bartholin was 'an 
excellent anatomist' but was 'too fond of monsters and other things 
strange and unusual' (David Murray, Museums: Their History and their 
Use, Glasgow, 1904, Vol 1, p. 195). Also see BM Nat History I, p. 
194, Dictionary of Scientific Biography I, p. 482-483, and others. 
Provenance: The library of Melvin Edward Jahn, with his neat 
bookplate on the inner front cover.

$2500.00

Images here:

http://tinyurl.com/2ef255t



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Michael John Thompson
ABAC / ILAB
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Hornby Island, BC
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