[Rarebooks] fa: OWEN FELLTHAM - RESOLVES: A DUPLE CENTURY - 1634

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 3. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/yyx233jp

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Owen Felltham [sometimes Feltham]: Resolves : A Duple Century : ye 5th Edition... wth. a large Alphabeticall Table therunto. London: Imprinted for Henry Seile and are to be sould at the Tygers head in S. Paules Churchyard, 1634. Small 4to (19 cm) in early full leather (sheep?); [8] + 448 + [22] pp. (separate title-page for "The second Centurie," but pagination is continuous); engraved title-page, woodcut decorations and initials.

Binding bumped at the corners, worn and rubbed, but sound; browning to the engraved title-page, occasional lighter toning elsewhere, scattered spots and light stains, some page edges bumped, tear to the fore-edge of the explanation page opposite the title, one text leaf similarly torn without loss, else quite clean, bright and crisp, firmly bound. Extensive manuscript notes, most in an early, seventeenth-century hand, to the endpapers and the versos of the title-pages (including a list of remedies "For Gravel [kidney stones]: eat largely of spinage / or drink largely of warm water sweet'd with honey /... or infuse an ounce of wild parsley seed in a pint of white wine / or [etc.]...").

An early printing of of these aphoristic commentaries on matters spiritual, ethical and political, first published ca. 1620 when the author was only eighteen years old. Owen Felltham (1602-1668) continued to expand and revise his "resolves" into the 1660s and they proved enduringly popular throughout the century. Fairly enlightened for his time, Felltham has even been described as something of a proto-feminist. Of Woman: "If wee argue from the Text, that male and female made man: so the man being put first, was worthier. I answer, So the Evening and Morning was the first day; yet few will thinke the night the better." Other subjects include: Of Poets and Poetry ("Surely he was a little wanton with his leisure, that first invented Poetry..."); Of Idle Bookes; Of the Temper of Affections; Of God and the Ayre; Of Dissimulation; A good Rule for chusing a Friend; etc., etc. This 1634 fifth edition not in ESTC, which shows only a sixth edition for this year.