Early Printed Books at Swann Galleries April 8

New York — Early Printed Books are at Swann Galleries Thursday, April 8 with noteworthy publications relating to early printed medical, scientific and travel works, including a selection of incunabula.

Scientific books lead the sale with the second edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, Basel, 1566, by Nicolaus Copernicus, which contains Narratio Prima by Georg Joachim Rheticus’s—Copernicus’s only pupil—not included with the first edition of De Revolution ($60,000-80,000); the first complete edition in English of Euclid’s The Elements of Geometrie, London, 1570 ($30,000-40,000); a first edition of Stanislaw Lubieniecki’s history of comets, Theatrum Cometicum, Duabus Partibus Constans, Amsterdam, 1668 ($8,000-12,000); and a first edition of Johann Zahn’s important work on the telescope, Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus sive Telescopium, Wurzburg, 1685–86 ($8,000-10,000).

Publications on medicine are on offer with Der Spiegel der Artzney bound with Gart der Gesuntheit; zu Latin Ortus Sanitatis, Strasboug, 1529, by Lorenz Fries ($15,000-20,000);  a first edition of Compendiosa Totius Anatomie Delineatio, London, 1545, by Thomas Germinus ($7,000-9,000); Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, Oppenheim, 1617, bound with Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae, Frankfurt, 1633, first editions of both works, by Robert Fludd ($6,000-8,000); and a first edition of Die Traumdeutung, Leipzig & Vienna, 1900, by Sigmund Freud ($6,000-8,000).

Incunabula includes the first illustrated Venetian version of Dante Alighieri’s La Commedia, 1491 ($5,000-7,000); and Sebastian Brant’s Expositiones Omnium Titulorum Legalium, Basel, 1490 ($4,000-6,000). Also from fifteenth century is a circa 1435–45 Book of Hours, Use of Utrecht, illuminated with five full-page miniatures and 25 large illuminated initials with extensive foliate ink tendrils ($15,000-25,000).

Set to cross the block are works discussing travel including Matthew Calbraith Perry’s Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas & Japan, Washington D.C., 1856, a special presentation copy with a secretarial note signed by Ulysses S. Grant ($3,000-5,000); a first edition of The Holy Land, London, 1855, by David Roberts with 250 full-page lithographic plates ($3,000-5,000); The Beautiful Scenery and Chief Places of Interest throughout the Crimea, London, 1856, by Carlo Bassoli; and the first Dutch edition of Toonneel van China, Amsterdam, 1668, by Athanasius Kircher ($1,000-1,500).