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

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 7. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/y7vp8rhy

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 full modern morocco with blind-tooled rules and decorations, gilt-lettered spine label; [8] + 448 + [22] pp.; separate title-page, dated 1633, for the "second centurie," but pagination is continuous); with the engraved title-page and explanatory leaf opposite it, woodcut decorations and initials. STC 10760.
Some cockling and mild toning to the leaves, first 10 leaves with damp-staining at the gutter, a few small spots and stains elsewhere, early owner's small ink signature, otherwise quite clean and sound and very firmly bound in a handsome period-style binding.

An early printing of of this eccentric collection of 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. A relatively enlightened fellow for his time, Felltham has even been described as something of a proto-feminist, i.e., 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.