Brahe, Tycho | Epistolarum astronomicarum libri ..., Frankfurt, 1610, first edition, third issue

Brahe, Tycho

Epistolarum astronomicarum libri; quorum primis. ... Frankfurt am Main: Godefrid Tampach, 1610 [but Uraniborg: Ex officina typographica authoris, 1596]

First edition, third issue, of the letters between Brahe and the Landgrave of Hesse and his astronomer, Christopher Rothman.

Other volumes were apparently intended but never published. Printed in 1596 on Brahe's own press at Uraniborg, the original Hven edition is usually found in the re-issues of 1601 (Nuremberg) or 1610 (Frankfurt), as is the case here.

4to (229 x 179 mm). Title-page with woodcut device, engraved frontispiece portrait of Brahe, 6 woodcut figures of Hven and the observatory, 3 of which full-page, errata leaf at the end, colophon with Brahe's large woodcut device; dark browning on quires *, 2B-2E, ragged fore-edge from paper flaw at 2D3, Harvard deaccession stamp to verso of title. New limp vellum, early manuscript title ("Tychonis. Brahe. Dani. Epis") to bottom edge of textblock

REFERENCES

Dibner, Heralds 4n; Honeyman sale 1:488

PROVENANCE

Congregazione dell'Oratorio di San Filippo Neri, Bologna (library stamp to title-page) — Robert Wheeler Wilson, presented to Harvard College Library in 1927 (engraved bookplates and Harvard deaccession stamp) — Robert S. Dunham (acquired from Gilhofer & Ranschburg in February 1949, pencil acquisition note to front pastedown; Sotheby's New York, 11 December 1993, lot 645)