ACORNS ON EDGES
PLINY the Elder.
Historiae mundi libri XXXVII, cum castigationibus et adnotationibus doctiss. & variis praeterea lectionibus ex mss. compluribus ad oram paginarum accurate indicatis, ex novissima & laboriosissima editione Jacobi Dalechampii … cum indice duplici, utroque locupletissimo …
Frankfurt, Claude de Marne and heirs of Jean Aubry, 1608.
8vo, pp. [xvi], 1688, [188], [2 (blank, device)], [2 (blank)]; woodcut devices to title and final leaf, woodcut diagram to p. 79, woodcut and factotum initials, typographic headpieces; foxed throughout, a few corners creased, abrasion to title causing a small hole through device, but a very good copy; bound in contemporary pigskin, roll-tooled in blind to a panel design with large central fleuron tool, edges stained blue and elaborately gauffered; a little rubbed with a few inconsequential stains; contemporary ink ownership inscriptions to title-page (one neatly excised at an early date), occasional early ink underlining and corrections, eighteenth-century ink note in French and Latin to title verso.
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Historiae mundi libri XXXVII, cum castigationibus et adnotationibus doctiss. & variis praeterea lectionibus ex mss. compluribus ad oram paginarum accurate indicatis, ex novissima & laboriosissima editione Jacobi Dalechampii … cum indice duplici, utroque locupletissimo …
First Frankfurt edition of Pliny’s Natural History, here bound as an enormous single volume with strikingly decorated edges featuring acorns and scrolls.
‘Pliny was a man of extraordinary industry and thirst for knowledge. He slept little, had books constantly read to him, and took an immense quantity of notes… His greatest surviving achievement is the Natural History, dedicated to Titus in 77 and published posthumously. Pliny tells us in the preface that it consists of 20,000 important facts obtained from 100 authors, but the real total of both is much higher’ (Oxford Companion to Classical Literature). The thirty-seven books encompass the physics of the universe; the geography and ethnology of Europe, Asia, and Africa; human physiology; zoology; botany; medicine; metals and stones; and the history of art. ‘It contains much that is interesting and entertaining, and much unique information about the art, science, and civilisation of the author’s day’ (ibid.).
An extensive inscription to the title verso in French adds Guy Patin’s praise for the book (‘Pliny’s History is one of the most beautiful books in the world, which is why it is known as the pauper’s library. If one adds Aristotle, the library becomes almost complete. If one adds Plutarch and Seneca, a whole family of good books is there: father, mother, eldest child, and cadet’, trans.) before switching to Latin to note Wagenseil’s objection to the absence of sacred texts on the list.
The monumental breadth of Pliny’s work – here presented as a single volume of almost two thousand pages – affords unusually large surfaces on the edges of the bookblock, which the binder has decorated with an elaborate pattern gauffered with points, featuring small acorns and a rosette among large shell-like scrolls.
USTC 2001727; VD17 1:047311F.
