Brahe, Tycho | De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis; [Progymnasmatum] liber secundus, Frankfurt, 1610

Brahe, Tycho

De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis; [Progymnasmatum] liber secundus. Frankfurt-am-Main: Godefrid Tampach, 1610

First edition, third issue, of Brahe's text on the Great Comet of 1577.

Tycho's treatise on the 1577 comet, together with his visualisation of the cosmos combining the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, was originally printed on the press of his Uraniborg observatory in 1588, and circulated among his correspondents. Kepler, one of Tycho's assistants, published a second issue, comprised in part of sheets printed at Uraniborg in 1588 (pages 1–464), and completed in Prague in 1603 as dated in the colophon. The present copy is from the third issue, bearing the Frankfurt title-page of 1610. This issue omits the portrait, which was printed on the verso of the title-page of the previous edition.

4to (229 x 179 mm). Large woodcut devices on title and recto of final leaf, 2 full-page woodcuts of Brahe's instruments (on pp. 460 and 463), numerous woodcut figures and diagrams; slight foxing and dampstaining, some worming cutting into a few catchwords and text, initial quire a bit loose, several short marginal tears, the last three leaves restored in the margins, early marginalia on flyleaf. Modern half vellum over blue paper boards.

REFERENCES

Houzeau & Lancaster 2699; Rocco/Cinti 25

PROVENANCE

Robert S. Dunham (acquired from F. Thomas Heller Rare Books, New York, in August 1957; Sotheby's New York, 11 December 1993, lot 646)