Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633

Sale 2633 - Lot 149

Price Realized: $ 1,125
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(RELIGION.) Cosmologia Sacra: or, A Discourse of the Universe as it is the Creature and Kingdom of God-- Samuel Sewall's copy. Frontispiece portrait plate. [14], xviii, 372 pages (pages 205-208 and 352-353 skipped as issued). Folio, contemporary paneled calf, worn, rejointed circa 1930s retaining all endpapers; 6 adhesion tears affecting text, a few early manuscript notes and corrections, moderate foxing, wear, and dampstaining; title page in red and black; early owners' inscriptions on title page and first preface page, later owner's label and remnant of another bookplate on front pastedown. In circa 1930s cloth custom slipcase with gilt spine label, minor wear. London: W. Rogers, et al., 1701

Additional Details

The Sewall-Pemberton-Dudley-Lincoln-Burrage-Woodin copy. You'll be challenged to find any book with as much documented provenance as this one. It has passed through the custody of 10 documented owners and 4 auctioneers--including a Salem Witch Trial judge, the earliest book auction catalog in America, and a Secretary of the Treasury. You now have the opportunity to add your own name to the list.

The author Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712) was an English scholar known as the "Father of Plant Anatomy." The Cosmologia Sacra was his final book, an attempt to address the anti-scripturalism of Spinoza and other philosophers by integrating science and the Bible into a grand system of cosmology. Grew never went to America, but had at least one American acquaintance: the Massachusetts judge and intellectual Samuel Sewall (1652-1730), best known as one of the justices who presided over the Salem Witch Trials--and the only one to formally apologize for his role. Sewall had emigrated from Grew's home town of Coventry, visited Grew in London in 1689, and corresponded with him in 1690. See William R. Lefanu, "The Versatile Nehemiah Grew", in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 115:6 (30 December 1971), pages 502-506.

Sewall's name is inscribed at the head of the book's preface. This was one of two copies he bought from London bookseller John Love, renowned as "the fattest and heaviest man ever known in England." The order was placed through Sewall's 11 October 1701 letter to Love, published in "Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall," Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 1886.

The preface inscription explains that the book was then made a gift to fellow Boston clergyman Ebenezer Pemberton (1671-1717)--perhaps immediately upon receipt, as Sewall had ordered two copies. Upon Pemberton's death, his extensive book collection was sold off on 2 July 1717 by auctioneer Samuel Gerrish. It was only the fifth known book auction in America, and is documented by the earliest surviving American book auction catalog. The catalog transcription can be found on line, showing this book as part of lot 7. The buyer was Massachusetts Attorney General Paul Dudley (1675-1751) per the preface inscription. Dudley also signed the title page.

From there, the book was owned by Jairus Lincoln (1794-1882), an abolitionist merchant from Hingham, MA, per his ownership label. Next was Boston collector Charles Dana Burrage (1857-1926); it was sold by his estate through the American Art Association, 1 April 1927, lot 836. The next owner was William H. Woodin (1868-1934), who served as Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury, and then passed to his widow Annie Jessup Woodin (1869-1941). Parke-Bernet sold off the collection for her estate in a 2 December 1941 auction, with this book sold for $45 as lot 403.

After this point, the trail goes cold, until our consignor purchased the book in 2019 at a New Jersey thrift store for $19.