Petrarch [Thomas Twyne, translator] | Phisicke against fortune, 1579, first English translation

Petrarch [Thomas Twyne, translator]

Phisicke against Fortune, aswell prosperous, as adverse, conteyned in two Bookes... now first Englished by Thomas Twyne. London: Richard Watkyns, 1579

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, small 4to (180 x 127 mm), gothic type, title-page with woodcut border, woodcut initials, nineteenth-century calf, lacking ⁋8 (supplied in photostat), neatly rebacked retaining most of spine

First English translation of De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae, known to nearly all the great writers of the Renaissance. The work contains chapters on dancing, gambling, wrestling, hunting & hawking, libraries, "elephantes & cammelles," alchemy, toothaches, gout, blindness, deafness, and lechery, etc.

PROVENANCE:

Surgeon General's Office Library: bookplate; Army Medical Library, Washington D.C.: inkstamp to verso of title and verso of final leaf

LITERATURE:

ESTC S114602; STC 11641; Pforzheimer 400