[Rarebooks] fa: BECCARIA - ESSAY ON CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS -1st Ed.1767

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with several other 18th- and 19th-century titles,  
auctions ending Sunday, Sept. 26. Details and images can be found at  
the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/yhk74ma
OR
http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

The first edition in English of Beccaria's seminal and revolutionary  
work, "one of the most influential books in the whole history of  
criminology" (Printing and the Mind of Man).

[Cesare Beccaria]: An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, Translated from  
the Italian; With a Commentary, attributed to Mons. de Voltaire,  
translated from the French. London: Printed for J. Almon, opposite  
Burlington-House, Piccadilly, MDCCLXVII [1767]. FIRST EDITION. Modern  
half leather over marbled boards, gilt-stamped spine labels; xii + 179  
+ [1] + lxxix + [1]pp. ESTC T138985.

Some toning and spotting to the title-page, offsetting (darkening) to  
the edges of the first and last few leaves from the original binding,  
mild toning to the text; otherwise clean and fresh, firmly bound in a  
handsome modern binding. Loosely laid in is the engraved armorial  
bookplate of the book's original owner, Parker of Park Hall, Esq. A  
superior copy of an important work, uncommon in the first edition.

First published in Italy three years before the English printing,  
Beccaria's radical and enlightened treatise on crime and criminals,  
the first full-scale work of penology, was a profound influence on the  
likes of Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and did more  
than any other eighteenth-century work to further the cause of legal  
and penal reform. "Beccaria maintained that the gravity of the crime  
should be measured by its injury to society and that the penalties  
should be related to this. The prevention of crime he held to be of  
greater importance than its punishment, and the certainty of  
punishment of greater effect than its severity. He denounced the use  
of torture and secret judicial proceedings. He opposed capital  
punishment, which should be replaced by life imprisonment; crimes  
against property should be in the first place punished by fines,  
political crimes by banishment; and the conditions in prisons should  
be radically improved... The success of Beccaria's book was immediate,  
six editions being published within eighteen months, and it was  
eventually translated into twenty-two languages. Its principles have  
been incorporated into the criminal practice of all civilized  
countries" (PMM, pp. 125-6).