[Rarebooks] fa: AN ENQUIRY INTO THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HOMER - Thomas Blackwell - 1736

[ArCh]

Auction ends Sunday, November 5. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/mpfur25k

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Thomas Blackwell:] An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer. London: [s.n.], Printed in the Year MDCCXXXVI [1736]. Second edition, 8vo (21 cm), in early/period Cambridge-style paneled calf, rebacked in later calf, gilt-lettered spine label; [4], 346, [82] pp.; with the list of plates and final advertisement leaf, engraved frontispiece and vignettes, folding engraved map. ESTC T70409.

Wear to the corners and spine ends, rubbing to the joints, a few modest abrasions to the boards; contents with light toning to the edges of the text block, a small area of worming to the bottom margin of the last seven leaves, not affecting any text, otherwise very clean and bright, firmly bound. Handsomely printed, with engravings by Gravelot, Vander Gucht, and others. 

Thomas Blackwell (1701-1757) was a Scottish classical scholar, professor of Greek at Aberdeen University. From an early age, he possessed a remarkable proficiency in both Greek and Latin and was esteemed so highly by the philosopher George Berkeley that the latter selected him as a professor in his projected college at Bermuda. First published in 1735, Blackwell's Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer was intended as "an answer to the question, 'By what fate or disposition of things has it happened that no poet has equalled him for 2,700 years, nor any that we know ever surpassed him before?' The 'Enquiry' was considered a remarkable book at the time, and... Gibbon... speaks of it as '...a fine, though sometimes fanciful, effort of genius'" (DNB).