?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 10,000
Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655) Institutio Astronomica juxta Hypotheseis tam Veterum, quam Copernici, et Tychonis.
Paris: Apud Ludovicum de Heuqueville, 1647.
Rare first edition, quarto, illustrated with text diagrams and full-page woodcuts; A3 with two slashes in the center of the page indicating that it was cancelled by the printer; errata information present at foot of e3 recto; bound in full contemporary English speckled calf, very nicely preserved (title page with old folds and fore-edge crumpling, no endleaves or pastedowns); some math equations and notes in English inside front board, a very nice survival; 8 1/2 x 6 1/4 in.
Houzeau & Lancaster 9222; very rare at auction.
Gassendi taught the work of his contemporaries, Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, and Galileo, as a professor of mathematics. The present work was adapted from his lecture series and is one of the very first modern astronomy textbooks ever published.
In the copy at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, a leaf [e4, not present in this copy] was printed to correct the imposition error on leaf A3 [cancelled and present in this copy], suggesting that the present copy was produced after the mistake was noticed but before the corrected sheet was printed. The Rome copy has been digitized and contains the slashed A3 identical to this copy, in addition to its replacement, printed as e4 and bound in that position [not present in the Gingerich copy]. [See: https://books.google.com/books?id=X1rDu4YlifAC&hl=&source=gbs_api]
Ex libris Professor, Astronomer, Historian & Bibliophile Owen Gingerich.
