Recorde, Robert | The Ground of Arts …, London, 1632, early edition, contemporary roan

Record, Robert

The Ground of Arts: Teaching the Perfect Worke and Practise of Arithmeticke, both in Whole Numbers and Fractions. London: Printed by Thomas Harper for John Harrison, 1632

Early edition of the first commerical arithmetic of any note used in English schools. Of the first edition (ca. 1540–1542) there is perhaps no copy extant; it was Recorde's first published textbook in mathematics. The present edition was augmented by John Dee, with a third part written by Wallis, and the whole corrected and enlarged by Robert Hartwell.

8vo (159 x 102 mm). Gothic type, diagrams, tables, occasional early marginalia; without the last leaf of Hartwell advertisements, dampstaining, marginal worming, some leaves frayed. Contemporary roan, several pen trials to boards; well-worn, shaken.

REFERENCES

ESTC S1287; STC 20809; USTC 3016271; cf. Smith History of Mathematics 320–321; this edition apparently unknown to Smith 213; cf. Taylor Tudor and Stuart 13

PROVENANCE

Robert S. Dunham (pencil acquisition note to endleaf; Sotheby's New York, 11 December 1993, lot 759)