Pliny | The Natural History with commentary by Sigismund Gelen, Basel, 1539

Plinius Secundus, Gaius (Pliny, the Elder)

Historiae mundi libro XXXVII ex postrema ad vetustos codices collatione cum annotationibus et indice. Basel: Hieronymus Froben (& Nicolaus Episopius), 1539

Folio (363 x 240 mm). Roman types. Woodcut printer’s device on title-page, last page, Kk6v (end of the text proper), and a1r (section-title to index), several 8-line historiated woodcut initials, 4-line ornamental initials in index; scattered light browning, a few stray, small wormholes, chiefly marginal. Contemporary blind-panelled pigskin over heavy paste boards, spine in five compartments, ink-lettered in the upper two, plain endpapers and edges; rather rubbed and soiled, some wormholes at foot of both covers, remnants of green silk ties.

A very nice copy of a significant early sixteenth-century edition, based on the edition of Erasmus printed by Froben in 1525, with annotations and commentary by the Bohemian scholar Sigismund Gelen. The extensive index is based on the work of Joannes Camers.

REFERENCES

Adams P1566