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5 book(s) with the same title
Systeme de la Nature ou Des Loix du Monde Physique & du Monde Moral. 2 vols. - [""MAN IS OF ALL BEINGS THE MOST NECESSARY TO MAN""]
London, 1774. 8vo. 2 volumes uniformly bound in contemporary half calf with gilt ornamentation to spine. Spines with wear of boards miscoloured. Internally fine and clean. (16) 397 pp."" (4), 500, (3) pp. Wanting the frontispiece.
Later edition, published four years after the original, comprising ""The System of Nature"" - one of the most important works of natural philosophy ever written and the work that is considered the main work of materialism - and ""The Social System"", being d'Holbach's seminal ""social"" and political continuation of that groundbreaking work. D'Holbach (1723-1789), who was raised by a wealthy uncle, whom he inherited, together with his title of Baron, in 1753, maintained one of the most famous salons in Paris. This salon became the social and intellectual centre for the Encyclopédie, which was edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, whom he became closely connected with. D'Holbach himself also contributed decisively to the Encyclopédie, with at least 400 signed contributions, and probably as many unsigned, between 1752 and 1765. The ""Côterie holbachique"" or ""the café of Europe"", as the salon was known, attracted the most brilliant scientists, philosophers, writers and artists of the time (e.g. Diderot, d'Alembert, Helvetius, Voltaire, Hume, Sterne etc, etc.), and it became one of the most important gathering-places for the exchange of philosophical, scientific and political views under the ""ancient régime"". Apart from developing several foundational theories of seminal scientific and philosophical value, D'Holbach became known as one of the most skilled propagators and popularizers of scientific and philosophical ideas, promoting scientific progress and spreading philosophical ideas in a new and highly effective manner. As the theories of d'Holbach's two systematic works were at least as anticlerical and unaccepted as those of his smaller tracts, and on top of that so well presented and so convincing, it would have been dangerous for him to print any of them under his own name, and even under the name of the city or printer. Thus, ""Systême de la Nature"" appeared pseudonomously under the name of the secretary of the Académie Francaise, J.B. Mirabaud, who had died 10 years earlier, and under a fictive place of printing, namely London instead of Amsterdam. ""He could not publish safely under his own name, but had the ingenious idea of using the names of recently dead French authors. Thus, in 1770, his most famous book, ""The System of Nature"", appeared under the name Jean-Baptiste Mirabaud"" (PMM 215), and so the next ""System"" also appeared in the same manner three years later. D'Holbach was himself the most audacious philosophe of this circle. During the 1760's he caused numerous anticlerical tracts (written in large, but not entirely, by himself) to be clandestinely printed abroad and illegally circulated in France. His philosophical masterpiece, the ""Système de la nature, ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral"", a methodological and intransigent affirmation of materialism and atheism, appeared anonymously in 1770"" (D.S.B. VI:468), as did the social and political follow-up of it, the famous ""Systême social"" in 1773. That is to say, Mirabeau whom he had used as the author on the ""System of Nature"" in 1770 is not mentioned in the ""Social System"", on the title-page of which is merely stated ""By the Author of ""Systême de la Nature"". In his main work, the monumental ""Système de la Nature"", d'Holbach presented that which was to become one of the most influential philosophical theories of the time, combined with and based on a complex of advanced scientific thought. He postulated materialism, and that on the basis of science and empiricism, on the basis of his elaborate picture of the universe as a self-created and self-creating entity that is constituted by material elements that each possess specific energies. He concludes, on the basis of empiricism and the positive truths that the science of his time had attained, that ideas such as God, immortality, creation etc. must be either contradictory or futile, and as such, his materialism naturally also propounded atheism"" his theory of the universe showed that nature is the product of matter (eternally in motion and arranged in accordance with mechanical laws), and that reality is nothing but nature. Thus, having in his ""Systême de la Nature"" presented philosophical materialism in an actual system for the first time and having created a work that dared unite the essence of all the essential material of the English and French Enlightenment and incorporate it into a closed materialistic system, d'Holbach had provided the modern world with a moral and ethic philosophy, the effects of which were tremendous. It is this materialism and atheism that he continues three years later in his next systematic work ""Systême social"", through which politics, morality, and sociology are also incorporated into his system and take the place of the Christianity that he had so fiercely attacked earlier on. In this great work he extends his ethical views to the state and continues the description of human interest from ""Systême de la Nature"" by developing a notion of the just state (by d'Holbach called ""ethocracy"") that is to secure general welfare. ""Système social (1773"" ""Social System"") placed morality and politics in a utilitarian framework wherein duty became prudent self-interest."" (Encyclopaedia Brittanica). ""Holbach's foundational view is that the most valuable thing a person seeking self-preservation can do is to unite with another person: ""Man is of all beings the most necessary to man"" (Sysème social, 76"" cf. Spinoza's Ethics IVP35C1, C2, and S). Society, when it is just, unites for the common purpose of preservation and the securing of welfare, and society contracts with government for this purpose."" (SEP). Both works had a sensational impact. For the first time, philosophical materialism is presented in an actual system, and with the second of them, this system also comprised politics and sociology, a fact which became essential to the influence and spreading of this atheistic scientific-philosophical strand. The effects of the works were tremendous, and the consequences of their success were immeasurable, thus, already in the years of publication, both works were confiscated. The ""Système de la Nature"" was condemned to burning by the Parisian parliament in the year of its publication"" the ""Système social"" was on the list of books to be confiscated already in 1773, and it was placed on the Index of the Church in August 1775. Both works are thus scarce. In spite of their condemnation, and in spite of the reluctance of contemporary writers to acknowledge the works as dangerous (as Goethe said in ""Dichtung und Wahrheit"": ""Wir begriffen nicht, wie ein solches Buch gefährlich sein könnte. Es kam uns so grau, so todtenhaft vor""), the ""Systems"" and d'Holbach's materialism continued its influence on philosophic, political and scientific thought. In fact, it was this materialism that for Marx became the social basis of communism. ""In the ""Système"" Holbach rejected the Cartesian mind-body dualism and attempted to explain all phenomena, physical and mental, in terms of matter in motion. He derived the moral and intellectual faculties from man's sensibility to impressions made by the external world, and saw human actions as entirely determined by pleasure and pain. He continued his direct attack on religion by attempting to show that it derived entirely from habit and custom. But the Systeme was not a negative or destructive book: Holbach rejected religion because he saw it as a wholly harmful influence, and he tried to supply a more desirable alternative. ""(Printing and the Mind of Man, 215). ""In keeping with such a naturalistic conception of tings, d'Holbach outlined an anticreationalist cosmology and a nondiluvian geology. He proposed a transformistic hypothesis regarding the origins of the animal species, including man, and described the successive changes, or new emergences, of organic beings as a function of ecology, that is, of the geological transformation of the earth itself and of its life-sustaining environment. While all this remained admittedly on the level of vague conjecture, the relative originality and long-term promise of such a hypothesis -which had previously been broached only by maillet, Maupertuis, and Diderot- were of genuine importance to the history of science. Furthermore, inasmuch as the principles of d'Holbach's mechanistic philosophy ruled out any fundamental distinction between living an nonliving aggregates of matter, his biology took basic issue with both the animism and the vitalism current among his contemporaries...This closely knit scheme of theories and hypotheses served not merely to liberate eighteenth-century science from various theological and metaphysical empediments, but it also anticipated several of the major directions in which more than one science was later to evolve. Notwithstanding suchprecursors as Hobbes, La Mttrie, and Diderot, d'Holbach was perhaps the first to argue unequivocally and uncompromisingly that the only philosophical attitude consistent with modern science must be at once naturalistic and antisupernatural."" (D.S.B. VI:469).
El Capital. Resumido y acompanado de un estudio sobre el socialismo científico por Gabriel Deville. Primera edición [Marx / Deville] (+) Socialismo Utopico y Socialismo Cientifico [Engels] (+) La Ley de Los Salarios y Sus Consecuencias [Guesde]. - [FIRST SPANISH EDITION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ABRIDGED VERSION OF ""THE CAPITAL""]
Madrid, Ricardo Fé, 1887. 8vo. Contemporary brown half calf with gilt lettering and ornamentation to spine and red paper covered boards. Most leaves evenly browned (due to the quality of the paper) and some brownspotting to last few leaves. Overall a very good copy indeed of this otherwise fragile book. [Socialismo Utopico... :] pp. (1)-91, (1) + frontispiece of Engels" [La Ley de Los Salarios... :] pp. (1)-44 + frontiespiece of Guesde" [El Capital:] pp. (I)-LVI, 263 pp.
The exceedingly scarce first Spanish edition of the most important abridged version of Marx's Capital ever to have appeared, published in the same year as what is generally accepted as the first Spanish edition of ""Das Kapital"" (Zafrilla's abridged version - defectively translated from Roy's French version - which was published in newspaper installments 1886-87).This Spanish translation was made from the French of Gabriel Deville (1854 -1940), the great French socialist theoretician, politician and diplomat, who did more than almost anyone else to raise awareness of Karl Marx's theories of the weaknesses of capitalism - most effectively through the present work, which came to have a profound influence upon the spreading of Marxist thought throughout the Spanish speaking part of the world. ""The epitome, here translated, was published in Paris, in 1883, by Gabriel Deville, possibly the most brilliant writer among the French Marxians. It is the most successful attempt yet made to popularize Marx's scientific economics. It is by no means free from difficulties, for the subject is essentially a complex and difficult subject, but there are no difficulties that reasonable attention and patience will not enable the average reader to overcome. There is no attempt at originality. The very words in most cases are Marx's own words, and Capital is followed so closely that the first twenty-five chapters correspond in subject and treatment with the first twenty-five chapters of Capital. Chapter XXVI corresponds in the main with Chapter XXVI of Capital, but also contains portions of chapter XXX. The last three chapters-XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX-correspond to the last three chapters-XXXI, XXXII, and XXXIII-of Capital."" (ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE, Intruductory Note to the 1899 English translation).The Spanish translator of the work is Antonio Atienza, a typographer and translator at the press of Ricardo Fé, who in 1886 volunteered his work at the newly founded ""El Socialista"", the Spanish flagship publication of Marxist socialism. It was also in 1886 that Atienza translated the present work, with the publication following in 1887. This translation happened almost simultaneously with the ""translation"" by Zafrilla, which appeared in weekly installments in the rival newspaper ""La Républica"", and the two first versions of ""Das Kapital"" to appear in Spanish tell the story of more than just the desire to spread Marx's ideas in Spain. Both versions were part of an ongoing struggle between political parties vying for the loyalty of Spain's workers (see more below). THE WORK IS OF THE UTMOST SCARCITY, WITH MERELY THREE COPIES LISTED ON OCLC (two in Bristish Library and one in Bibliothèque Nationale) and none at auction over the last 40 years at least.Backgrund for the publication:Among the numerous nascent political organizations that sprouted in the last half of 19th century Spain, many of them as a result to the tumultuous years after the so-called ""Glorious Revolution"" of 1868, was the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE). The party was founded by Pablo Iglesias in 1879, and it was the second socialist party in Europe, preceded only by the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). Notably, of the original twenty-five founding members sixteen were typographers. March of 1886 was a turning point for the PSOE, as they began to publish a weekly newspaper, ""El Socialista"", in order to reach a wider audience throughout Spain and thus advance the Marxist socialist agenda, of which the paper became the flagship. (To this day, it is the official paper of the PSOE, the present ruling party in Spain, although it was suppressed during the years of Franco's dictatorial regime and published sporadically in exile, in France, or clandestinely in Spain. It was again published regularly since 1978. The PSOE gave up Marxism in 1979 in favor of Democratic Socialism.)In 1886 the translator of the present work, Antonio Atienza, was a typographer and translator at the press of Ricardo Fé. At the same time, he volunteered his work at the newly founded El Socialista, as the PSOE funds were quite limited-he wouldn't have a paid position in the paper until 1913. He translated articles by Engels, Guesde, and Buechner, among others.""Das Kapital"" had been published twenty years earlier. That it took so long to reach Spain in book form reveals, among other things, that up to that moment most of Marx's thoughts had filtered through to the workers' unions and parties by way of the writings of his followers as they were interpreted and explained by the intellectuals in charge of these organizations. It is also evident that the complexity of the book wouldn't be of much use to the average worker, factory and otherwise. Enter Deville's abridged version, which was more accessible in that some of the most basic ideas of Marx were digested and re-explained. The point was not to publish a book that could only be only be understood by economists and philosophers, but one that could be given to the workers. A rival party leftist party, considered by the PSOE as bourgeois, was the Partido Republicano Federal. One of its members, Pablo Correa y Zafrilla, undertook the task of translating the first volume of Das ""Kapital"". Quite usual for Spain at the time, the translation was published in weekly instalments to subscribers of their newspaper, ""La República"", starting in 1886 and ending in 1887. The paper then sold the cloth binding to its subscribers and offered to collect the installments to have the book bound for its customers. According to the ad in ""La República"" (22/1/1886), the translation is purportedly from the German original, but it has been clearly demonstrated that it is a defective translation from the French translation of Roy (Ribas). It seems very plausible that when the PSOE found out that someone else in Spain was beginning to publish a translation of the first volume of ""Das Kapital"", El Socialista decided to publish Deville's translation. In fact, the publication of El Capital by ""La República"" was briefly mentioned once in ""El Socialista"", and not in flattering terms (7/10/1887). That a Marxist newspaper disparaged against the first Spanish publication of ""Das Kapital"" reveals, among other things, that they were not terribly excited about some other party's publication producing a defective rendering of their guiding principles. On the other hand, that ""La República"" had decided to publish the book was probably brought about by the foundation of ""El Socialista"", as they saw that the PSOE now had the means to spread their ideas throughout the country. It is in no small way possible that the haste to publish the book brought about the many defects in the translation from the French of Roy as Correa hurried to finish it.José Mesa y Leompart, a typographer, translator, and Marxist ideologue and activist, had experienced the upheavals of the Commune of Paris during his exile after the 1868 revolution. He developed a friendship with Marx's son in law, Paul Lafargue, and his wife, Laura Marx-who themselves had been in exile in Spain during 1871-72-, as well as with Engels, with whom he shared much correspondence, and many other figures of the Marxist movement. He also met both Marx and Engels during their exile in London. His friendship with Pablo Iglesias was a major driving force behind the formation of the PSOE, and he collaborated with El Socialista both as a writer and as a financial supporter. Mesa writes to Engels in April of 1887 lamenting that some Spanish thinkers were using Marx's theories and the policies of the German Socialist Party to deny the concept of class struggle, despite the fact that ""we have […] proven to them that you and Marx have always said the opposite, and having quoted to them the very clear statements of the German Socialist Party"" [but] they remain unmovable, and at some point they even wanted to publish the abridged Capital by Deville, without the preface, and with notes interpreting the meaning in their own way-which we have impeded-(the Resumen [abridgement] of Deville will soon be published, faithfully translated into Spanish.""Therefore, as early as April of 1887 the present translation was already in progress, and in fact, according to Mesa, soon to be published, so it was apparently very advanced. It is then quite possible that Antonio Atienza was commissioned to translate the Deville's abridgement a few months earlier, and not unlikely as far as 1886, when ""La República"" was still publishing installments of the Correa translation. The PSOE is obviously trying to obscure and minimize Correa's translation by publishing the Deville book, as the task of translating ""Das Kapital"" from the original would be lengthy and costly, and it would have come out too late to ascertain their political hold on Marx's ideas. This translation of Deville, then, sees the light is in the very midst of the bickering between leftist parties, and is in fact a product of the confrontations between leftist ideologies. It was finally published about nine months after Mesa's letter to Engels. The first announcement in ""El Socialista"" appears in their November 11th, 1887 issue. The price is four pesetas, or about the cost of an entire year's subscription to the paper, although subscribers could purchase it at half price. Still, given that many subscribers were workers of scarce means, less than three hundred copies were sent out to the main Spanish cities, and that the total edition was probably about a thousand copies at most.The scarcity of this book can be underlined if one considers the virulent war that was waged against all socialist and Marxist literature during and after the Spanish Civil War by the dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco. Book purges and burnings were considerable throughout Spain since the onset of the war, in 1936. It is not that books were burnt sporadically and occasionally, but rather they were destroyed in a systematic and terrifyingly efficient manner. As early as September of 1936 official orders were given to all civil governors, mayors, school inspectors in the nationalist areas to purge all ""harmful"" books, such as pornography and books of a communist or Marxist content. Teachers, librarians, and private citizens, often purged their own libraries, public or personal, of such works in order to comply with the official orders. Countless people were summarily executed for owning certain books that revealed their political tendencies. Obviously, owning actual edition of a book by Marx was reason enough to be deemed guilty and likely executed. As the war advanced, many other such official orders were issued, and unfathomable numbers of books were burnt. To this is added that many libraries were burnt down during the bombardments that took place throughout the country, and that all the libraries of the leftist parties were systematically destroyed. The end of the war, in 1939, only made it official throughout the entire country that communist and socialist literature was banned. So even the few copies that might have survived the fires and the purges were surely disposed of by their owners. It is no small wonder that this particular copy did manage to survive.Withbound in the present volume is the first Spanish translation of Engels' ""Socialism: Utopian and Scientific"" and Jules Guesde's work on the Law of Wages. See:Ribas, Pedro. ""La primera traducción castellana de El capital, 1886 - 1887"", in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Madrid, junio de 1985, pp. 201-210.Castillo, Santiago. ""Marxismo y socialismo en el siglo XIX español"", in, Movimiento sociales y estado en la España contemporánea, Manuel Ortiz et al (coord.), Universidad de Castila-La Mancha, 2001Boza Puerta, Mariano, and Sánchez Herrador, Miguel Ángel. ""El martirio de los libros: una aproximación a la destrucción bibliográfica durante la Guerra Civil."" In Boletín de la Asociación Andaluza de Bibliotecarios. Año nº 22, Nº 86-87, 2007, págs. 79-96Tur, Francesc. https://serhistorico.net/2018/04/04/el-bibliocausto-en-la-espana-de-franco-1936-1939/
De historia plantarum libri decem. Graecè & Latinè. Textum Graecum variis Lectionibus, emendationibus, hiulcorum supplementis: Latinam Gazae versionem nova interpretatione ad margines: totum Opus absolutissimis cum Notis, tum Commentariis: item rario... - [THE MOST IMPORTANT BOTANICAL WORK OF THE 17TH CENTURY]
Amsterdam, Heinric Laurentius, 1644. Folio. Contemporary full vellum with neat later (19th century) rebacking. Six raised bands and gilt title to spine. Some wear to extremities. Internally a fresh and clean copy with only a bit of occasional brownspotting. Endpapers with a bit of soiling. 2 bookplates to inside of front board: Gilbert Redgrave, London (dated 1894) & Gorden M. Jones, Virginia. Text in Greek and Latin. Woodcut title-page, numerous woodcut intials throughout, and more than 600 woodcut illustrations in the text. (20), 1187, (1), (88 - Index) pp.
First edition thus, being the most important and influential edition of Theophrastus' seminal work ""Enquiry into Plants"" - the first systematization of the botanical world and the most important contribution to botanical science up until the Renaissance. Bodaeus von Stapel's groundbreaking edition constitutes the first illustrated edition of Theophrastus' masterpiece as well as the first with both Greek and Latin text. Furthermore, von Stapel has not only collected all relevant commentaries and knowledge, he has also added corrections and much foundational information, turning the work into one of the most influential botanical works of the 17th century, profoundly influencing the likes of Linnaeus and contributing significantly to the development of modern scientific botany. ""This edition displays great care and research" the notes are numerous and learned, and all botanical information to be gleaned from Aristotle, Pliny, Dioscorides, and other ancient writers, seems to be embodied in this work. The Greek text is Heinsius's" the Latin version is that of the editor, who has placed Gaza's in the margin, with frequent corrections. The conjectures of Scaliger, Constantine, and Salmasius, are also incorporated... it has collected into one body the opinions of the old writers on the subject of the PLANTS. It contains some wood-cuts of the rarer species, which are much better uncoloured than coloured."" Dibdin II:498). The numerous woodcut plant illustrations were partly copied from other sources and partly made especially for this edition. Thus, apart from being ""one of the best and most thoughtfully prepared of all the editions of Theophrastos"" (Hunt), our editor has also made original contributions that are of great importance. ""It is interesting not only because of the brilliance of the editing, but, curiously enough, to the American botanist as well, for involving in the discussion certain species from Virginia, other parts of the New World, and Asia. The illustrations of these plants have been largely overlooked in botanical history, because of their incidental presence in a work which might not be expected to contain anything of the sort. Some were merely borrowed from l'Ecluse or de Lobel, but others seem original in this work"" (H.H. Bartlett: Fifty-five Rare Books - quoted by Hunt).At the height of the Renaissance, with the expansion of the known world and the spreading of the book due to the invention of the printing press, many new publications on plants appeared. Most of these publications, however, were primarily concerned with the medicinal qualities of individual plants and only few authors or editors took an interest in the general nature of the plants and how they could systematically be classified. One of the few exceptions was Bodaeus von Stapel. With his seminal 1644 edition of ""Historia Plantarum"", he focused on the overarching classification system of plants and took Theophrastus' work a step further, adding essential commentaries and illustrations - illustrations that were to be copied for centuries after. These illustrations remain the standard illustrations of Theophrastus' foundational work. This edition of Theophrastus' ""Historia Plantarum"" became the standard edition of that earliest work on systematic botany and the edition that all serious scientific botanists of the 17th and 18th centuries will have studied. ""Linnaeus, in the practice of his favourite art of systematizing, classified not only plants but the writers about them. The writers he distinguishes primarily as Botanists, and Plant Lovers, recognizing as Botanists only such as treat of plants from some philosophic or scientific point of view. Choosing his illustrations from annals of remote antiquity, he names among the earliest of the Greeks who wrote of plants Hippocrates"" but because he wrote of plants only in the interests of medicine Linnaeus styles him Father of Medicine... Similarly Aristotle... is down in the Linnaean list of ancient celebrities as Prince of Philosophers. To Theophrastus, however, he accords the title Father of Botany. From this opinion, far from having been newly promulgated in Linnaeus's time, there has been no dissenting voice. On the contrary, Albert Haller, one of the most learned men in Europe in his day, and a botanist of such renown that Linnaeus held him in reverence, and also in some fear, denominates Theophrastus ""the first of real botanists in point of time."" Kurt Sprengel in the nineteenth century, having rehearsed the names of a long line of ancient authors who had written more or less concerning plants, says: ""But the most illustrious of them all, and the true father of botany, was Theophrastus Eresius…."" (Greene, Landmarks of Botanical History, I:128).It is no wonder that Linnaeus should find in Theophrastus the Father of his own field - The ""Historia Plantarum"" was not only the earliest work on systematic botany, it also contained Theophrastus' description of the formation of the plant seed, the earliest account known and the best that was made for 2000 years.Hunt: 240" Pritzel: 9197 BM: V:2091 Dibdin: II:498.
Voyage D'Italie, contenant les Moeurs des peuples, la description des Villes Capitales, des Eglises, Convents, Tombeaux, Bibliotheques (...). 2 vols. - [THE MOST INFLUENTIAL GUIDEBOOK OF ITS DAY - COINING ""GRAND TOUR""]
Paris, Ballaine, 1671. 8vo. Two part bound in one contemporary full calf binding with five raised bandes. Wear to extremities. Upper capital chipped, with a bit of loss of leather, showing endbands. Inner front hinge split. Previous owner's name to front free end-paper. Small worm-tract to inner margin, not affecting text. (36), 436, 341 pp.
The exceedingly rare first French translation of Lassels‘ travel-guide, considered the first comprehensive guide to Italy it quickly became the most influential English guidebook of its day. The concept of the “Grand Tour” was also first introduced here. Lassels’ asserts that any truly serious student of architecture, antiquity, and the arts must travel through France and Italy, and suggested that all ""young lords"" make what he referred to as the Grand Tour in order to understand and learn about the political, social and economic realities of the world. “The idea of tourism as self-enriching rather than soul-preserving come truly into vogue between 16th and 18th centuries. The Grand Tour, a term first used in the French translation of a ‘Voyage or a Compleat Journey through Italy’ by Richard Lassels published in 1670, encompassed experience (including sexual), education and exchange of ideas, creating the largest and most independent wandering “academy” – a sort of finishing school – that Western civilization had ever known”. (White, Museum and Heritage Tourism). “The term ‘Grand Tour’ itself first appeared in the French translation of Richard Lassels’ Voyage or a Complete Journey Through Italy, which was published in 1670. This was one of a number of accounts of travel on the Continent, most of which were written by Englishmen, and by the early eighteenth century, there was a steady stream of such publications. The eighteenth century then saw a massive growth in the production of books, newspapers, and other printed material, and this encouraged the development of different types of writing and publishing, including travel accounts. There also emerged travel guides, the most useful of which was probably The Grand Tour containing an Exact Description of most of the Cities, Towns and Remarkable Places of Europe by Mr [Thomas] Nugent, first published in four volumes in 1743, and repeatedly republished. An alternative was The Gentleman’s Pocket Companion for Travelling into Foreign Parts, first published in 1722, which contained a list of useful phrases at the end, but not, perhaps, those which the wellbred young man should employ.” (Kathleen Burk, The Grand Tour of Europe) The most influential English guidebook of the period, conditioning the first impressions of many a tourist to that country. It also provided the basis for subsequent guidebooks . . . The unprecedented attention it paid to art and architecture encouraged the phenomenon of the eighteenth-century style 'grand tour' (a term coined by Lassels) according to which art prevailed over all other subjects, religious or secular"" (ODNB). The original English edition was published in 1670. French translations were published it 1671 and 1682. A German translation titled 'Ausführliche Reise-Beschreibung durch Italien' appeared in Frankfurt editions in 1673 and 1696. It was reprinted well into the 1700ies. Provenance: A large Danish estate.
De aureo Cornu. Dissertatio. - [THE FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT TREATISE ON THE GOLDEN HORN]
Hafniae (Copenhagen), Melchior Matzan, Joachim Moltke, 1641. Small folio. Bound in an newer absolutely exquisite full mottled calf pastiche-binding with five raised bands and gilt title-label to richly gilt spine. Gilt ornamental borders with gilt corner-pieces to boards, all edges of boards gilt, and inner gilt dentelles. Title-page restored at inner hinge, far from affecting print. Some leaves slighly dusty and some mostly light brownspotting. Overall very nice indeed. The folded plate neatly re-enforced at the foldings, from verso, and on stub. ""Dupl"" written in hand to upper right corner of title-page and with two stamps to verso: ""Museum Britannicum"" and ""British Museum Sale Duplicate 1787"". (8), 72 pp. + large folded engraved plate of the horn.
Exceedingly scarce first printing of one of the most important works in Scandinavian history. Worm’s monumental 1641-treatise is the first and single most important work on what is arguably the most famous Danish cultural artifact, namely the first Golden Horn, and constitutes our primary source of knowledge of that now lost treasure. For Danes, the Golden Horns, discovered on 1639 and 1734 respectively, with their amazing, complicated, and tragic story, constitute the Scandinavian equivalent to the Egyptian pyramids and have been the object of the same kind of fascination here in the North, causing a wealth of fantastical interpretations, both historical, literary, mystical, linguistic, and artistic. The two golden horns constitute the greatest National treasure that we have. They are both from abound 400 AD and are thought to have been a pair. A span of almost 100 years elapsed between the finding of the first horn and the finding of the second. Although the first was by far the most important, both findings are now a fundamental part of Danish cultural heritage. In 1802 the horns were stolen, and the story of this theft became the greatest Danish detective story of all times. The thief was eventually caught, but it turned out that he had melted both of the horns and used the gold for other purposes. Before the horns were stolen, a copy of the horns was made and shipped to the King of Italy, but the cast which was used to make this copy was destroyed, before news had reached the kingdom of Denmark that the copies made from the cast were lost on their way to Italy, in a shipwreck. Worm's work constitutes not only the earliest description of the seminal first horn, but also the most important source that we now have to the knowledge of the horn. It is on the basis of the description and depiction in the present work that the later copies of the first horn were made. Both horns were found in Gallehus near Møgeltønder, the first in 1639, by Kirsten Svendsdatter, the second in 1734, by Jerk (Erik) Lassen. Kirsten Svendsdatter made her discovery on a small path near her house, initially thinking that she had stumbled upon a root. When she returned to the same place the following week, she dug up the alleged root with a stick, and mistook it for an old hunting horn. She brought it back home and began polishing it. During the polishing of it, a small piece broke off, which she brought to a goldsmith in Tønder. It turned out that the horn was made of pure gold, and rumors of Kirsten's find quickly spread. The horn was eventually brought to the King, Christian IV, and Kirsten was given a reward corresponding to the gold value of the horn. The king gave the horn to his son, who had a lid made for it so that he could use it as a drinking horn. An excavation of the site where the horn was found was begun immediately after, but nothing more was found - that is until 95 years later when Jerk Larsen was digging clay on his grounds - merely 25 paces from where Kirsten had found the first horn. The year was now 1734. The horn that Larsen found was a bit smaller in size and was lacking the tip, but it still weighed 3,666 kg. After the horn had been authenticated, it was sent to King Christian VI, where it was placed in a glass case in the royal art chamber, together with the first horn. Before being placed here, a copy was made of both horns. These copies were the ones lost in the ship wreck, however, and as mentioned the casts had already been destroyed. In the fatal year of 1802, the gold smith and counterfeiter Niels Heldenreich broke in to the royal art chamber and stole the horns. By the time the culprit was discovered, the horns were irrevocably lost - Heldenreich had melted them and used the gold to make other things, such as jewellery. A pair of earrings that are still preserved are thought to have been made with gold from the horns, but this is all that we have now have of the original horns. New horns were produced on the basis of the descriptions and engraved illustrations that were made after the finding of the horns. The plate in the present work constitutes our main source of knowledge of the appearance of the first horn and is the single most important depiction of it, forming the basis of the reproductions. ""The longest of the golden horns was found in 1639 and described by Ole Worm in the book 'De Aureo Cornu', 1641 (a treatise which is also included in his greater ""Danicorum Monumentorum"" [1643]). The German professor at Soro Academy Hendrich Ernst, disagreed with Worm’s interpretation of the horn. Ernst believed that the horn came from Svantevits temple on Rügen, while Worm interpreted it as a war trumpet from the time of Frode Fredegods, decorated with pictures, calling for virtue and good morals. Worm immediately sent his book to Prince Christian and the scholars at home and abroad. You can see in his letters, that not only did the horn make an impression, but also the letter and the interpretation. In that same year there were such lively discussions on the horn among the scholars of Königsberg, now Kaliningrad! In 1643 Worm reiterated the description of the golden horn in his great work on Danish runic inscriptions, 'Monumenta Danica'. In 1644, his descriptions of the horn reached scholars and libraries in Schleswig, Königsberg, London, Rome, Venice and Padua. Several learned men wrote poems for him, and the golden horn was mentioned in an Italian manus. Map Cartoonist Johannes Meyer placed the finds on several of his map of South Jutland. When the Swedish commander Torstensson attacked Jutland in 1643, Peter Winstrup wrote a long poem in Latin addressed to the bishop of Scania (which at that time still belonged to Denmark), the poem was called 'Cornicen Danicus'. It was immediately translated into Danish, entitled 'The Danish Horn Blower'. He interpreted the horn and its images as a warning of war, and his interpretations were very hostile to the Swedish. Paul Egard and Enevold Nielssen Randulf were among some of the other scholars who interpreted the Golden Horn In the 1640s. They were both deans in Holstein, and had a more Christian interpretation of the horn. All these works were illustrated with copies of Worms depictions of the horn. The Golden Horn remained known throughout the 1600s, both in terms of interpretations of the horn and designs. The found of the short golden horn in 1734 renewed the interest of the meaning of the horns."" (National Museum of Denmark). This monument of Danish cultural history is incredibly scarce in the trade. We have never seen a copy before, and there is not a single auction record traceable.
