Gilbert, William

De magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de mango magnete tellure; Physiologia nova, plurimus, & aegumentis, & experimentis demonstrata. London: Peter Short, 1600



Folio (11 1/4 x 7 3/8 in.; 286 x 188 mm). Woodcut printer's device on title-page, woodcut of Gilbert's arms on title verso, one woodcut folding plate, 88 woodcut illustrations and diagrams in text (4 full-page), ornamental woodcut headpieces and initials; light dampstain to plate, some scattered browning and foxing, some neat early underscoring and marginalia in red (see below). Contemporary stiff vellum, overlapping fore-edges, front cover black-stamped with cipher igtcp and date 1604, plain endpapers, blue edges; ties loss, minor worming to front cover, ties lost, rear endpapers replaced. Brown buckram folding-case.

Matthias-Stiftes Breslau (1709 inscription on title-page) — "Ex Biblioteca Reg. Univers. Vratisl." (library stamp, documentation of removal from library penciled in German, also manuscript note from library director laid on back pastedown)

Dibner 54; Grolier/Horblit 41; Houzeau & Lancaster 2870; Norman 1:905; PMM 107; STC 11883; Wheeler Gift 72

First edition of "the first major English scientific treatise based on experimental methods of reserach" (PMM); early state, with manuscript corrections on pages 2, 11, 22, and 47. Gilbert's Magnete "deals with the history of magnetism from the ealiest legends about the lodestone to the facts and theories known to Gilbert's contemporaries. ...In the last chapter of book I, Gilbert introduced his new basic idea which was to explain all terrestrial magnetic phenomena: his postulate that the earth is a giant lodestone and thus had magnetic properties. ... The remaining five books of De magnete are concerned with the five magnetic movements: coition, direction, variation, declination, and revolution" (DSB).

Such fundamental terms as "electric force," "electric attraction," and "magnetic pole" were used for the first time in De magnete. Gilbert's enormous influence in the field of electricity is due to his reliance on empirical evidence: "He scorned unproved authority and the superstitions of his time" (Dibner). Kepler, Bacon, Boyle, Newton, and Galileo all relied on Gilbert's findings in their own work.

A very good copy, with intriguing provenance: the seventeenth-century annotations in red ink, on the whole, are not the usual type of comments found in early scientific books that simply summarize or repeat the text. The writer shows an avid intellectual curiosity with specific interest in magnetism, making more than one hundred marginal notes. Many of these, in fact, are phrased as questions about the shape, strength, and metallic content of magnets themselves, and about the various properties of magnetic forces.