Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$1090.78 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Book measures 11 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches. Collation, [16], 218,[19], [3], New Atlantis, 43pp, complete with engraved frontis, and additional engraved title. Bound in full period or early calf, flat bands, blind lines to boards. Calf rubbed, scuffed, some loss on edges and corners, short split on joints, but both boards holding firm. Generally a good period binding. Internally, lacking fixed endpapers, initial stamp [ BE ], on both endboards, and on verso of title page, short tear to margin of frontis, small light stain marks to first few pages, light staining to lower half of about 30 other pages. Signature of Geoffrey Keynes on endpaper '', A few other inscriptions, of which two are dated, 1642,1672. Pages in good clean condition. A nice copy.
Seller: George Jeffery Books, HERTFORDSHIRE, United Kingdom
Price: US$1153.18 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: pp.xiv, 218, [20], ‘New Atlantis. A Worke Unfinished. Written By The Right Honourable Francis, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban’, [1], 43, [2]. Written By The Right Honourable Francis L. Verulam Viscount St. Alban. Published After The Author’s Death, By William Rawley Doctor In Divinity, One Of His Majesties Chaplains London, John Haviland for William Lee.Frontispiece portrait, pictorial engraved title. Original full calf (showing minor rubbing). Early handwriting on front free flypaper.
Seller: Anah Dunsheath RareBooks ABA ANZAAB ILAB, Auckland, NZ, New Zealand
Price: US$1390.50 + shipping
Description: Quarto. 5th edition. Frontispiece portrait of Bacon, engraved title page and regular title page, (14)p. dedication, to the reader and table of experiments, 218pp., (21)pp, [together with] New Atlantis. A Work Unfinished. Undated title page, 43pp. (1)pp. to the reader, p. 13 and 14 misnumbered 21 and 22., p. 19 and 20 misnumbered 27 and 28. This 5th edition was published after the author's death by his personal secretary William Rawley, Doctor Divinity, one of his Majesties Chaplaines. Hereunto is now added an alphabeticall table of the principall things contained in the whole worke. This work is an anthology of one thousand paragraphs consisting of extracts from many books, mostly from antiquity, and Bacon's own experiments and observations. It is fascinating as it contains numerous passages dealing with medical treatments for the prolongation of life and the preservation of flesh. At the end of the volume, Rawley also included the New Atlantis. A Worke unfinished. Bacon was a scientist, politician, philosopher, attorney general, member of Parlement, author, etc. . He was also appointed Lord Chancery of the High Court, but he had become best known for his promotion of the scientific method. He was knighted upon James I's ascension to the British throne. A handsome copy bound in 19th century 3/4 polished calf over cloth, raised bands with title gilt, portrait frontispiece and engraved title page had been mounted, top edges of leaves were closely trimmed a bit, frontispiece and title page have finger soiling, text clean without foxing and beautifully printed.
Seller: Alcuin Books, ABAA/ILAB, Scottsdale, AZ, U.S.A.
Price: US$1400.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: Full-Leather. No Jacket. HBNODustJacket issued, 1639, 1st Edition of 5th Edition, Pages edges Gold Gilt, Oversized Tall Brown embossed Leather with Tooled Spine & Gold Gilt Lettering with Red Label with Gold Gilt , VG-/VG-, AS-IS , NODJ, Edges Extremities & Spine show Scuffing & Some Rubbing, Cover Shows some Rub, & Wear & Possible Restoration, Interior Relatively Nice, Tight, Clean, with few small pg chips, title page has few Chips & small Pieces Missing, Some pages have penciled or small ink notations in Margins , Minor Fox, Few of Back pages in End of Book show small stains near interior Spine, WRITING IN SORT OF OLD ENGLISH STYLE, But Not in Latin ,Minor Fox, Few of Back pages in End of Book show small stains near interior Spine & SOME PENCIL MARGIN NOTES NUMEROUS PGS, SOME CHAPTERS HAVE DECORATED HEADINGS , CHAPTER IN BACK ON NEW ATLANTIS,
Seller: Bluff Park Rare Books, LONG BEACH, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Fifth edition. (16), 218, (22); (4), 43 pp. with portrait frontispiece and extra engraved title page. Hardcover, bound in later calf over marbled boards, rebacked. The text unmarked.
Seller: Moroccobound Fine Books, IOBA, Lewis Center, OH, U.S.A.
Price: US$3900.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: An attractive, crisp copy in contemporary English speckled calfskin, ruled in blind (light wear to extremities, discreet repairs to head-cap, the lowest compartment of the spine sympathetically restored; a few light scrapes to the boards.) Complete with the engraved allegorical title page (dated 1631) and engraved portrait of Bacon. The text is type-ruled throughout. Small tear in outer margin of title (no loss). Woodcut head-pieces and initials at the opening of each book. The "New Atlantis" is introduced by a separate, undated title page. Provenance: 18th c. black ink stamp of a ram, with "Sheppard" and the number "10" stamped beneath. Possibly the mark of Thomas Sheppard (d. 1763). See David Pearson, "Book Owners Online" for more on this puzzling stamp. First published in 1627, the year after Bacon's death, the "Sylva Sylvarum" was intended as one part in a suite of natural histories that occupied much of Bacon's energies in the last years of his life. Cumulatively, these natural and experimental histories were to constitute Part III of Bacon's "Instauratio Magna" (the Great Renewal). "The 'Histories', or collections of data, were to be drawn up systematically and used to raise an ordered system of axioms that would eventually embrace all the phenomena of nature." (DSB) This volume also contains the tract entitled 'The New Atlantis', Bacon's vision of an ideal scientific society, the goal of which 'is the knowledge of Causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of the Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.' "Along with Descartes, Bacon was the most original and most profound of the intellectual reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He had little respect for the work of his predecessors, which he saw as having been vitiated by a misplaced reverence for authority, and a consequent neglect of experience. Bacon's dream was one of power over nature, based on experiment, embodied in appropriate institutions and used for the amelioration of human life; this could only be achieved if the rational speculations of philosophers were united with the craft skills employed in the practical arts. "The route to success lay in a new method, one based not on deductive logic or mathematics, but on eliminative induction. This method would draw on data extracted from extensively and elaborately constructed natural histories. Unlike the old induction by simple enumeration of the logic textbooks, it would be able to make use of negative as well as positive instances, allowing conclusions to be drawn with certainty, and thus enabling a firm and lasting structure of knowledge to be built. "Bacon never completed his project, and even the account of the new method in the 'Novum Organum' (1620) remained unfinished. His writings nevertheless had an immense impact on later seventeenth century thinkers, above all in stimulating the belief that natural philosophy ought to be founded on a systematic program of experiment. "Perhaps the best picture of Bacon's final vision can be found in a work of a very different kind [and] of uncertain date. The 'New Atlantis' is an account of an imaginary voyage to an island in the Pacific Ocean, and of the scientific institution, Salomon's House, found there. Like most utopian narratives, this is deeply revealing of its author and provides the fullest picture we have of Bacon's picture of a reformed, active science, and of the kind of institution that he saw as necessary to its flourishing. It also had a profound influence on the millennialist, visionary Baconianism of the 1640's and on the founders and early practice of the Royal Society." (Encyclopedia of Philosophy) In his "New Atlantis", Bacon recounts a fictitious journey to the Island of Bensalem, a Utopian Christian society governed by laws set forth by the Law-Giver, King Solamona. The most completely delineated aspect of Bacon's utopian nation is the Order of Salomon's House, a society of fellows "dedicated to the Study of the Workes and Creatures of God." The end of this scientific society is "the Knowledge of Causes, and Secret Motions of Things; and the Enlarging of the bounds of Humane Empire, to the Effecting of all Things possible." The society maintains laboratories for conducting a vast array of experiments in all aspects of natural phenomena; it is, in fact, the perfect instrument for executing Bacon's plan as outlined in his "Instauratio Magna", of which the "Sylva Sylvarum" is one part.
Seller: Liber Antiquus Early Books & Manuscripts, Chevy Chase, MD, U.S.A.