Lot 34
  • 34

Bacon, Sir Francis

Estimate
2,000 - 3,000 USD
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Description

  • The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, of Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban. With a Table of the Colours of Good and Evil. Whereunto is added the Wisdom of the Antients. Enlarged by the Honourable Author Himself; and now more Exactly Published. London: Printed by M[ary]. Clark, for Samuel Mearne, in Little Britain, John Martyn, in St. Pauls Church-Yard, and Henry Herringman, in the New Exchange, 1680
  • ink, paper, leather
8vo (6 1/16 x 3 5/8 in.; 154 x 92 mm). Title within double-ruled border; faint dampstaining in upper right corner of first few leaves, otherwise pristine. Contemporary black morocco, tooled to an overall pattern of pointillé rosettes and quatrefoils, drawer-handle tools, stars, gold dots and slightly larger discs, spine in six compartments similarly gilt, marbled endpapers, edges gilt.

Provenance

Charles Butler of Warren Wood (label on front pastedown) — Sotheby's London, 25 June 1987, lot 7. acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch

Literature

Wing B288; ESTC R11985; Gibson 24a. For the binding, see: Foot, Henry Davis Gift II, nos. 117–120; Nixon, English Restoration Bookbindings, pp. 32–34, pl. 56–64; Bernard Breslauer, Cat. 104, no. 208

Catalogue Note

A sumptuous and well-preserved binding, by "Queens' Binder A," one of the leading London binders of Charles II's reign. H.M. Nixon suggested that "Queens' Binder A" was William Nott, on the basis of an entry in Pepys's diary:  "the famous bookbinder that bound for my Lord Chancellor's library."