[Rarebooks] fa: LUCRETIUS - DE RERUM NATURA 1712 - Large 4to/Fine Printing/Fine Engraved Plates

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, April 29. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y93zryy8

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Titus Lucretius Carus:] Titi Lucretii Cari : De Rerum Natura libri sex. Ad optimorum Exemplarium fidem recensiti. Accesserunt Variae Lectiones, quae Libris Mss. & Eruditorum Commentariis notatu digniores occurrunt. Londini [London]: Sumptibus & Typis Jacobi Tonson, MDCCXII [1712]. First edition thus. Tall 4to (30 cm) in early/period morocco, rebacked in modern morocco with gilt spine title, modern marbled endpapers, page edges dyed yellow; [4], 386, 339-370 pp. (as issued: text and register are continuous); with 7 copper-engraved plates, one of which is folding, 11 engraved vignettes, and a number of large engraved initials (complete). Gordon 502; ESTC T50367.

A superb example of a handsomely printed and sumptuously illustrated book, aptly described as "a very elegant Edition" by Edward Harwood in his View of the Various Editions of the Greek and Roman Classics (1782). No less a bibliophile than Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of this  same edition, retaining it from the books bequeathed to him by George Wythe (see entry on p. 8 of Jefferson's ms. inventory: "Lucretius. Lond. Tonson. 1712. 4to."). Lucretius wrote his De rerum natura [On the Nature of Things], an explanation of Epicureanism in dactcylic hexameter, in the first century BCE. Disparaged and condemned as "atheistical" by the early Christian church and largely forgotten through the Middle Ages, it was only rediscovered in 1417, after which it was increasingly highly regarded, both for its poetry and its scientific content.

Original boards with bumping and wear to the corners and edges; contents with some browning/offsetting to and from the engravings, a small hole to one plate (opposite p. 58) and another to one leaf of the index, some spotting to a few leaves near the end, a few small spots and light touches of soiling elsewhere, otherwise wonderfully clean and fresh, firmly bound. Front paste-down with the bookplate of noted English bibliophile Charles Benson. A near-fine or better copy.