[Rarebooks] fa: Mathias Prideaux: AN EASY AND COMPENDIOUS INTRODUCTION FOR READING ALL SORTS OF HISTORIES - 1650

[ArCh]

Auction ends Sunday, April 16. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/39s48v7h

Many thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Mathias Prideaux: An Easy and Compendious Introduction for Reading all sorts of Histories: Contrived, in a more facile way then[sic] heretofore hath been published, out of the Papers of Mathias Prideaux Mr of Arts and sometime fellow of Exeter Colledge in Oxford. The Second Edition Corrected and Augmented, and three usefull Indexes added. Oxford: Printed for Leonard Lichfield, and are to be sold by Thomas Robinson, 1650. Small 4to (19.5 cm) in early/period calf; [8], 256, [2], 257-351, 39 pp. (two parts with separate title-pages, but the pagination and register are continuous); woodcut decorations and initials. Wing P3440; Madan II, 2038; ESTC R32261.

An intriguing and idiosyncratic outline of world history, edited and published posthumously by the author's father, John Prideaux, Bishop of Worcester. In addition to those subjects one would expect to find in such a work (Israelites, Greekes, Persians, Romanes, Frankes, British Monarchs, etc.), there are also sections on dynasties and peoples of a more obscure and exotic nature: Usurping Nimrods, Luxurious Sodomites, Aegyptian Magitians, Devouring Abbadons, Incurable Babylonians, etc. This second edition is augmented by an index. A popular work, there were six editions published by 1682.

Binding with rubbing and edge-wear, bumping to the corners, cracking to the joints; lacking the blank endpapers and with an early owner's (Robert Lloyd) ink annotations to front and rear paste-downs and obscured signature to the title-page, contents with occasional spots and soiling, some light marginal damp-staining, else generally quite clean and sound.