JF Ptak Science Books Post 1999
This copy of Thomas Blundeville's (1522-1606) work on astronomy and navigation contains some very fine examples relating to imaging the history of astronomy--a high-Renaissance work of scholarship and humanism.
The book has a long and detailed title: M. Blundeuile his exercises : containing eight treatises, the titles
whereof are set down in the next printed page : which treatises are very
necessarie to be read and learned of all young gentlemen, that haue not
beene exercised in such disciplines, and yet are desirous to haue
knowledge as well in cosmographie, astronomie, and geographie, as also
in the art of nauigation, in which art it is impossible to profite
without the helpe of these, or such like instructions : to the
furtherance of which art of nauigation, the said M. Blundeuile specially
wrote the said treatises .. with this copy being the fourth edition (corrected and augmented), and printed in London in 1613--an interesting edition, which contained the new data of the circumnavigation of Sir Francis Drake.
[Sources: full text here via the Library of Congress; found via the pinterest collection of Trevor Owens.]
Notes:
1. "... his work indicates a surprising breadth of expertise and crystallizes with remarkable specificity the combination of fields that were important for the pragmatically oriented humanist reader in the final third of the sixteenth century"--Henry S. Turner, The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts 1580–1630 (2006), p. 34
From the Folger Shakespeare Library description of their slightly-earlier copy of this work: "A briefe description of the tables of the three speciall right lines belonging to a circle, called signes, lines tangent, and lines secant", "A plaine treatise of the first principles of cosmographie" and "A brief description of vniuersall maps and cards" all have separate dated title pages (all dated 1606 except the last, which is dated 1605); "A plaine description of Mercator his two globes", "A very brief and most plaine description of Master Blagraue his astrolabe", "A nevv and necessarie treatise of nauigation" and "The true order of making of ptolomie his tables" have separate undated title pages; register and foliation are continuous.
And the explanatory text for the cosmological engraving above:
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