[Rarebooks] fa: ROBERT SIMSON - OPERA QUAEDAM RELIQUA 1776 (Presentation copy from the nobleman who subsidized its printing)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 26. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/m9n3x9o

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.



Robert Simson: Roberti Simson, M.D. matheseos nuper in academia Glasguensi professoris : Opera Quaedam Reliqua, Scilicet, I. Apollonii pergaei de sectione determinata libri II.  restituti, duobus insuper libris aucti. II. Porismatum liber, quo doctrinam hanc veterum geometrarum ab oblivione vindicare, et ad captum hodiernorum adumbrare constitutum est. III. De logarithmis liber. IV. De  limitibus quantitatum et rationum, fragmentum. V. Appendix pauca continens problemata ad illustrandam praecipue veterum geometrarum analysin. Nunc primum post auctoris mortem in lucem edita impensis quidem Philippi comitis Stanhope, cura vero Jacobi Clow in eadem academia philosophiae professoris, cui, auctor omnia sua manuscripta testamento legaverat. Gratum, ut speratur, geometris munus futurum, nec scriptoris, jam clarissimi, famae offecturum. Glasguae [Glasgow]: in aedibus academicis, excudebant Robertus et Andreas Foulis academiae typographi, MDCCLXXVI [1776]. FIRST EDITION. Thick 4to (24 cm) bound in modern red morocco and marbled boards; [8],x,594,[2],34,[2],33,[1];23,[1]p.; with the half-title ("Opera quaedam geometrica post mortem ejus impensis Philippi comitis Stanhope impressa"); numerous in-text diagrams and geometrical figures. ESTC T148766; Bonar (Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith) p. 167; Gaskell 600.

With an intriguing provenance: this appears to have been a presentation copy from the man who sponsored and paid for the work's publication, Philip, Earl of Stanhope, as evidenced by the ink inscription on the  half-title: "Dono ill[ustris]. Comitis de Stanhope 1776." The same page also bears the signature of Grandjean de Fouchy, presumably Jean-Paul Grandjean de Fouchy (1707-1788), French mathematician and astronomer, and permanent secretary of the l'Academie Royale des Sciences. Stanhope (1714-1786), a serious amateur mathematician himself, was a close friend of Robert Simson as well as Adam Smith (who had a copy of this book in his library).

A foundational work of Enlightenment mathematics: the posthumously-published collected papers of Robert Simson (1687-1768), for fifty years professor of mathematics at Glasgow University and the foremost Scottish mathematician of the 18th century. The work was edited by James Clow, successor to Adam Smith in the Chair of Logic at Glasgow. Some copies apparently contain a frontispiece portrait, though none is called for in the ESTC catalogue listing; this copy has none. Binding with light wear to the extremities, light sunning to the boards; discreet library stamps of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society; some browning/staining to the first and last 3-4 leaves, with occasional small areas of staining to the upper edges of the leaves; one or two leaves with short edge-tears; a few neat, light (erasable) penciled notes in the margins; otherwise very clean and sound, securely bound. A handsome copy.