Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks, first edition, first issue, London, 1704. $15,000 to $25,000.
Complete Catalogue Coming Soon
A choice selection of incunabula brings to auction infrequently seen editions of Johannes Jacobus Canis’s guide to the study of civil and canon law, De modo studendi in utroque iure, Padua, 1476; Albertus Magnus’s comprehensive lapidary De mineralibus, Pavia, 1491; and Philippus Beroaldus’s philosophical tract on happiness, De felicitate opusculum, Bologna, 1495.
Science offerings range from the 1704 first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Opticks, and third, fourth, and fifth editions of his Principia Mathematica, to the 1867 patent for a “Steam Bird or Flying Steam Engine fitted with Wings flapped by the Action of Steam” and the scarce 1931 first edition of Walter Goodacre’s The Moon with a Description of its Surface Formations. A large medical section features early psychiatric literature, such as Sir Thomas Willis’s 1672 De anima brutorum and Franz Anton Mesmer’s 1779 Mémoire sur la Découverte du Magnétisme Animal.
Incunabula
Johannes Jacobus Canis, De modo studendi in utroque iure, first edition, Padua, 1476. $6,000 to $9,000.
Pope Clemens V, Constitutiones, Nuremberg, 1482. $2,500 to $3,500.
Nicolaus Panormitanus de Tudeschis, Lectura super V libris Decretalium, Basel, 1480-81. $5,000 to $7,000.
Johannes Nider, Manuale confessorum, Basel, circa 1474. $4,000 to $6,000.
Science
Albertus Magnus, Liber aggregationis, Cologne, circa 1506. $4,000 to $6,000.
Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, complete set of first editions of Faraday’s papers on electricity and magnetism, London, 1832-56. $3,000 to $4,000.
William Gilbert, Tractatus sive physiologia nova de magnete, second edition, Sedini, 1628. $3,000 to $5,000.
Walter Goodacre, The Moon with a Description of its Surface Formations, first edition, Bournemouth, 1931. $800 to $1,200.
Medicine
René Descartes, Les Passions de l’Ame, first edition, Paris, 1649. $3,000 to $5,000.
Franz Anton Mesmer, Mémoire sur la Découverte du Magnétisme Animal, first edition, Geneva & Paris, 1779. $800 to $1,200.
John Bulwer, Philocophus, first edition of the first book in English on the deaf, London, 1648. $1,000 to $2,000.
Harvey Cushing, Intracranial Tumours, first edition, signed and inscribed to a colleague, Springfield, 1932. $1,000 to $2,000.
Travel & More
James Cook, complete set of the Southern Hemisphere, South Pole, and Pacific Ocean voyages, nine volumes, London, 1773-84. $10,000 to $15,000.
Nicolaus Bertrand, Opus de Tholosano[rum] Gestis ab Urbe Condita, first edition of a history of Toulouse, including the earliest known view of the city, Toulouse, 1515. $2,000 to $3,000.
John Bulwer, Chirologia, first edition of an exhaustive study of gesture, London, 1644. $1,500 to $2,500.
Niccolò Circignani, Ecclesiae militantis triumphi, hand-colored copy of a collection of martyrdom scenes, Rome, 1585. $3,000 to $5,000.
Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius, Panegyricus dictus Constantino Augusto, first separate edition of a collection of acrostic poems dating from the early 4th-century A.D., Augsburg, 1595. $1,000 to $2,000.
Exhibition Open October 19–24
The exhibition is free to attend and open to the public. We welcome special and educational groups with advance notice—send an inquiry to rsvp@swanngalleries.com.
Exhibition Hours
Saturday, October 19 — 12 pm to 5 pm
Monday, October 21 — 10 am to 6 pm
Tuesday, October 22 — 10 am to 6 pm
Wednesday, October 23 — 10 am to 6 pm
Thursday, October 24 — 10 am to 12 pm
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