EUCLID (fl. about 300 B.C.). Liber Elementorum, translated from the Arabic into Latin by Adelard of Bath (fl. 1st half 12th century), revised by Campanus of Novara (d. 1296), Venice, Erhard Ratdolt, 25 May 1482, chancery 2° (287 x 210mm.), FIRST EDITION, second state, collation: a10, b-r8, r8 blank, 138 leaves, 45 lines, gothic type except headlines (book-numbers) in roman, woodcut and type-rule geometrical diagrams in margins, elaborate 3-sided woodcut border and 10-line opening initial on a2r, many 5-line and a few 3-line initials (a2 with large 3-inch burn-hole at outer margin, repaired but with loss to 3 diagrams on recto and affecting another on verso, recto of the same page with library accession number stamped at foot, first gathering, a, affected by up to a dozen worm-holes widely-spread across text and margins, lighter worming thereafter, but at least one persistent worm-hole throughout much of the volume, the final gatherings, p and r, again more persistently wormed, blank recto of a1 and blank verso of r8 both soiled), 18th-century calf boards (rebacked in library cloth in the earlier 20th century but spine now badly broken). [BMV V, p. 285; Dibner 100; GKW 9428; Goff E113; Hain 6693; Horblit 27; Norman 729; PMM 25; Proctor 4383; Smith p. 11; Sparrow 59; Thomas-Stanford 1a]

Details

EUCLID (fl. about 300 B.C.). Liber Elementorum, translated from the Arabic into Latin by Adelard of Bath (fl. 1st half 12th century), revised by Campanus of Novara (d. 1296), Venice, Erhard Ratdolt, 25 May 1482, chancery 2° (287 x 210mm.), FIRST EDITION, second state, collation: a10, b-r8, r8 blank, 138 leaves, 45 lines, gothic type except headlines (book-numbers) in roman, woodcut and type-rule geometrical diagrams in margins, elaborate 3-sided woodcut border and 10-line opening initial on a2r, many 5-line and a few 3-line initials (a2 with large 3-inch burn-hole at outer margin, repaired but with loss to 3 diagrams on recto and affecting another on verso, recto of the same page with library accession number stamped at foot, first gathering, a, affected by up to a dozen worm-holes widely-spread across text and margins, lighter worming thereafter, but at least one persistent worm-hole throughout much of the volume, the final gatherings, p and r, again more persistently wormed, blank recto of a1 and blank verso of r8 both soiled), 18th-century calf boards (rebacked in library cloth in the earlier 20th century but spine now badly broken). [BMV V, p. 285; Dibner 100; GKW 9428; Goff E113; Hain 6693; Horblit 27; Norman 729; PMM 25; Proctor 4383; Smith p. 11; Sparrow 59; Thomas-Stanford 1a]

Lot Essay

The standard medieval recension of the text and the first mathematical book of any importance to make its appearance in print. Thomas-Stanford (pp. 3-4) observes how "it was the first attempt -- and a highly successful one -- to produce a long mathematical book illustrated by diagrams. In his dedicatory letter to the Doge Ratdolt says that he had often wondered why the great output of the Venetian printing presses included so few and so insignificant mathematical works. He had discovered that this was due to the difficulty of printing the diagrams without which such books were almost unintellegible, and he had set himself to overcome the difficulty." The editio princeps, printed in Greek type, was published by Johann Herwagen in Basle in 1533.

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