Hobbes, Thomas

Estimate

6,000 - 8,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Leviathan, Or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiaticall and Civill. London: Printed for Andrew Crooke, at the Green Dragon in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1651
calf,paper,ink

Folio (275 x 178 mm). Engraved allegorical title, letterpress title with woodcut "head" ornament, and 1 folding letterpress table. Dampstained and soiled, marginal wormholes to second half of text, contemporary autograph note titled "Spinoza & Hobbes" laid down to front paste-down, contemporary notation to engraved title. Contemporary calf; re-backed with modern calf, corners bumped, some stains and wear to covers.

Provenance

Charles Plummer (armorial bookplate); Tho[mas] Ogborne (contemporary ownership inscription); contemporary marginalia

Literature

Macdonald & Hargreaves 42; Pforzheimer 491; PMM 138; Wing H2246

Catalogue Note

First edition, with the winged "head" ornament on letterpress title. Hobbes' masterpiece of political theory formed on the experience of the English Civil War, in which the State is seen as an artificial monster to which individuals submit for their own survival. "This book produced a fermentation in English thought not surpassed until the advent of Darwinism. Its importance may be gauged by the long list of assailants it aroused. It was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum 7 May 1703, though all Hobbes's works had previously been condemned in toto, and it still remains a model of vigorous exposition, unsurpassed in the language" (Pforzheimer).