Aristoteles Master-piece, or, The Secrets of Generation displayed in all the parts thereof [Aristotle's Masterpiece] - Rare Book Insider
Aristoteles Master-piece

[Aristotle]

Aristoteles Master-piece, or, The Secrets of Generation displayed in all the parts thereof [Aristotle’s Masterpiece]

London: J. How, 1684: 1684
  • $75,000
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First edition of Aristotle’s Masterpiece, “the most popular book about women’s bodies, sex, pregnancy, and childbirth in Britain and America from its first appearance in 1684 up to at least the 1870s” (Treasures, Library Company of Philadelphia). Aristotle’s Masterpiece—neither by Aristotle nor a masterpiece—is “the first sex manual written in English” (Norman). The work documents theories and practices of human reproduction during the early modern period. This first edition was assembled in part from excerpts of existing midwifery books, primarily Levinus Lemnius’s The Secret Miracles of Nature (1658) and Jacob Rueff’s The Expert Midwife (1658). The book’s pseudo-Aristotle attribution both lent it an aura of credibility and hinted at the sexual nature of its contents. After the publication of a book called Aristotle’s Problems in 1595, which included a few explicit discussions of sex, the name ‘Aristotle’ came to euphemistically indicate sexual knowledge to an early modern audience. Unlike medical texts on similar subjects, the book was intended for a vernacular readership and was widely disseminated in Britain and America. It was eventually published in hundreds of editions in at least three versions, each appropriating and combining text from existing works. On average, an edition of the Masterpiece was published every year for 250 years. It was still for sale in London’s Soho sex shops as late as the 1930s. The book’s title page—promising “a word of Advice to both Sexes in the Act of Copulation”—speaks to the sexual knowledge offered within. Aristotle’s Masterpiece emphasizes both male and female partners’ enjoyment of the act. The book’s attention to pleasure was essential to its focus on procreative sex within marriage. Underpinning the Masterpiece is the theory that a woman must “cast forth her Seed to commix with the Man (which imploys a willingness in her to be a Copartner in the Act)” in order to conceive. With female and male partners playing an equally active role in “casting forth their seed,” both partners’ arousal and enjoyment was crucial to reproduction. Thus, women’s sexual appetite was accepted as a natural part of life, and the onset of menstruation credited with “[inciting] their Minds and Imaginations to Venery.” This first edition concludes with “a word of advice to both sexes in the time of copulation,” imparting to its readers a final lesson on the importance of foreplay: “[A husband] must entertain [his wife] with all kind of dalliance, wanton behaviour, and allurements to Venery but if he perceive her to be slow and more cold, he must cherish, embrace, and tickle her that she may take fire and be in flames to venery, for so at length the womb will strive and wax fervent with a desire of casting forth its own seed.” This is an especially appealing example of a landmark book in the history of women’s health, reproduction, and sex. The first edition of 1684 is known in three variant settings, all printed by J. How, priority unknown. ESTC records only the incomplete British Library copy (lacking the plates comprising the final gathering I) of our setting, which has line 11 of title ending “both”, line 18 of title ends “Ge-”, and the first line of the imprint ending “sold,” signature B5 is under the “nt Bl” of “effluent Blood” and on p.190 the fifth line from bottom begins with a capital “Q.” Provenance: “William Sweet [? scuffed] His book 1740 February the 21,” ownership inscription on the verso of frontispiece. Wing A3697fA. ESTC R504793. 12mo. Contemporary sheep, some wear. Woodcut frontispiece and 6 woodcuts of monstrous births (including repeat of frontispiece). Final gathering well thumbed and dog-eared with short tears at fore-edge with minor losses. A very appealing, honest copy.
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Tanglewood Tales

HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL First American edition, first printing of Hawthorne’s final children’s book. A spectacular American literary presentation copy inscribed by Nathaniel Hawthorne to Oliver Wendell Holmes: “O.W. Holmes from his friend N.H.” Holmes wrote about Tanglewood Tales with great enthusiasm in a letter to its publisher, James T. Fields: “Hawthorne’s book has been not devoured, but bolted by my children. I have not yet had a chance at it, but I don’t doubt I shall read it with as much gusto as they, when my turn comes. When you write to him, thank him if you please for me, for I suppose he will hardly expect any formal acknowledgment” (September 6, 1853). The two were friends for many years. Holmes served as Hawthorne’s pallbearer in May 1864. The next month he wrote in The Atlantic, “Our literature could ill spare the rich ripe autumn of such a life as Hawthorne’s, but he has left enough to keep his name in remembrance as long as the language in which he shaped his deep imaginations is spoken by human lips.” Inscribed copies of Tanglewood Tales are rare at auction, with no other examples appearing since 1974. This volume, inscribed by Hawthorne to Holmes, must be counted as one of the best nineteenth-century American literary presentation copies in private hands. BAL 7614 (first printing, with only Boston Stereotype Foundry on the copyright page). Clark A22.2a. Original green cloth. Spine ends chipped, rear joint repaired. Half morocco case. Provenance: 1. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., inscribed by Nathaniel Hawthorne; 2. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., with his calling card inscribed to his nephew, presenting the book as a Christmas gift: “Ned with love Merry Christmas from his uncle Wendell.”
  • $30,000
  • $30,000
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Photographic portrait inscribed by Whitman with four lines from Leaves of Grass!

Photographic portrait inscribed by Whitman with four lines from “Salut au Monde!”

Whitman, Walt A rare portrait with a Leaves of Grass quotation in Whitman’s hand. The photogenic and self-promoting poet sat for (and gave away) many photographs, but very rarely did he inscribe them with his verse. Here he writes lines from his poem “Salut au Monde!”—his “calling card to the world, as well as one of his most successful compositions.” Whitman writes beneath this portrait the very lines that Folsom and Allen call a “prophetic exclamation” of Whitman’s desire for an international audience (Walt Whitman & the World, p. 1): My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth, I have look’d for equals & lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands; I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them. “‘Salut au Monde!’ is Whitman’s calling card to the world, as well as one of his most successful compositions. With its closeups and panoramic visions of the earth, the poem extends and internationalizes the outward progression of the first person seer in ‘Song of Myself.’ It begins the journey motif in what James E. Miller has classified as the ‘Song Section’ (‘Song of the Open Road,’ ‘Song of the Rolling Earth,’ etc.) of Leaves of Grass. From American brotherhood to a universal unity, Whitman’s ongoing poetic aspiration is toward an ‘internationality of poems and poets, binding the lands of the earth closer than all treaties and diplomacy’” (Zapata-Whelan, Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia). The poem was first published in the second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856) under the title “Poem of Salutation.” The poet amended the work slightly and retitled it “Salut au Monde!” for the third edition of Leaves of Grass (1860). A splendid Whitman portrait with a rare and deeply personal Leaves of Grass inscription. This is the only Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem that we have been able to locate. Photomechanical print from a photograph made in Toronto in 1880. 5 ½ x 3 ½ in. image size. Fine, ornate gilt frame. Fine condition. Folsom, “Notes on Photographs,” 1880s, no. 8.
  • $75,000
  • $75,000
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Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America . . . the third edition [bound with:] Large Additions to Common Sense

Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America . . . the third edition [bound with:] Large Additions to Common Sense

PAINE, THOMAS FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING sheets of Common Sense, here with the third edition title page and prefatory leaf. Richard Gimbel’s definitive study identifies points in every gathering distinguishing the three editions that Bell printed in early 1776. This copy of Common Sense contains all of the points of the first printing, save the two-leaf gathering [A]2 (title and preface). Bound in at the end is Paine’s Large Additions to Common Sense, which Bell pirated from a competitor and offered separately for one shilling to buyers of Common Sense. “Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously in January 1776, was the first vigorous attack on King George and the first public appeal for an American Republic. It is not too much to say that the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, was due more to Paine’s Common Sense than to any other single piece of writing” (Streeter). Born in England in 1737, Paine moved to London in 1774 where he met Benjamin Franklin, who encouraged him to emigrate to America. Franklin provided Paine with letters of introduction to his son William Franklin, royal governor of New Jersey, and his son-in-law Richard Bache, an influential merchant in Philadelphia. Paine arrived in America in November 1774, an unemployed 37-year old immigrant. Through Franklin’s influence, the brilliant but unpolished Paine gained access to many leading American intellectuals and soon became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine. Within one year of his arrival, Paine was working on early drafts of Common Sense, which was published on January 10, 1776. The pamphlet, which immediately became the most talked-about publication in America, made Paine a the leading voice of revolution. Common Sense is brilliant in its simplicity and contains many of the most memorable phrases of the revolutionary period. Paine wrote, “in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. A government of our own is our natural right it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.” It was “the most brilliant pamphlet written during the American Revolution, and one of the most brilliant pamphlets ever written in the English language” (Bernard Bailyn). “The immediate success and impact of Common Sense was nothing short of astonishing. Common Sense went through twenty-five editions and reached literally hundreds of thousands of readers in the single year 1776 The pamphlet’s astonishing impact stemmed from the fact that it appeared at precisely the moment when Americans were ready to accept Paine’s destruction of arguments favoring conciliation and his appeal to latent republicanism, to the material interests of the colonists and to the widespread hopes for the future of the New World. By doing all this in a new style of writing and a new political language, Paine ‘broke the ice that was slowly congealing the revolutionary movement’” (Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America). Together with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist, Common Sense is one of the fundamental documents of the birth of our nation. The most recent census of Common Sense locates seventeen complete first editions. Only two of these remain in private hands, and neither is likely to appear for sale. The present volume, containing the first edition sheets, is the most desirable available copy of Common Sense, perhaps the most influential book in American history. Two volumes in one. Disbound, original stabholes visible. K1 detached with blank lower margin torn. Some staining, foxing and wear, old inscription on verso of title. Half morocco case. Gimbel, Thomas Paine. A Bibliographical Checklist of Common Sense (New Haven, 1956).
  • $250,000
  • $250,000
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AMIRI BARAKA. (LEROI JONES)

AMIRI BARAKA. (LEROI JONES)

BARBOZA, ANTHONY (BARAKA, AMIRI) (LEROI JONES) Gelatin silver print. 14 x 14 in. image on 16 x 20 in. sheet. Light wear. Signed by Barboza and titled “Imamu Baraka – poet – 76” by the photographer. This is a splendid Anthony Barboza portrait of Amiri Baraka. Baraka’s illustrious and controversial 50-year career, in which he first achieved fame as Leroi Jones, encompassed poetry, drama, fiction, criticism, and activism. Critic Arnold Rampersad counted Baraka with Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison “as one of the eight figures who have significantly affected the course of African-American literary culture.” Anthony Barboza (b. 1944) is perhaps most famous for his portraits of musicians, dancers, and writers and for his photojournalist, fashion, and editorial spreads in countless magazines. His work has been exhibited in many solo and group shows and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Cornell University, the Brooklyn Museum, the Schomburg Center – NYPL, and the National Portrait Gallery, among others. Barboza’s photographs are the subject of a major new monograph, Eyes Dreaming: Photography by Anthony Barboza (Getty Museum). This is a splendid portrait linking two of the great African American artists of the second half of the twentieth century. “When I do a portrait, I’m doing a photograph of how that person feels to me; how I feel about the person, not how they look. I find that in order for the portraits to work, they have to make a mental connection as well as an emotional one. When they do that, I know I have it”—Anthony Barboza
  • $4,200
  • $4,200
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Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care [Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care]

Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care [Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care]

SPOCK, BENJAMIN ONE OF THE BOOKS OF THE CENTURY. Spock’s book helped to revolutionize child-rearing in post-war America. Within one year of its first publication the book sold 750,000 copies, and it has since sold more than 50 million copies in ten editions and more than 40 languages. “When it appeared in 1946, the advice in Dr. Spock’s now classic book was a dramatic break from the prevailing ‘expert’ opinion. Rather than force a baby into a strict behavioral schedule, Spock, who had training in both pediatrics and psychiatry, encouraged parents to use their own judgment and common sense” (NYPL Books of the Century). The New York Times noted that “babies do not arrive with owner’s manuals But for three generations of American parents, the next best thing was Baby and Child Care Dr. Benjamin Spock breathed humanity and common sense into child-rearing.” Spock’s critics believed that his “permissive” approach to parenting had helped to create a generation of self-centered narcissists—the baby boomers and the counterculture of the 1960s. Spock’s book was first issued by Duell, Sloan and Pearce in May 1946 as the Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. That hardcover edition was intended to capture the notice of reviewers and the medical community. But the main publishing effort was the Pocket Books paperback titled The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care. That textually identical edition, first published a few weeks later at 25 cents to maximize sales and reach, became a runaway bestseller. This typescript, which uses the Pocket Books title, concludes with the toilet training section. The published edition continues with sections on older children beginning at age one. This corrected typescript shows countless substantial differences from the published edition. Comparison of this typescript with the published text reveals that Spock added and removed many passages and entire sections of the book. This is the only extant manuscript of the first edition of Spock’s Baby and Child Care. Spock’s voluminous papers, held by Syracuse University, include multiple boxes relating to the second and later editions, but the first edition is not represented there. New York Public Library Books of the Century 95. Guardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time 33. Library of C Original ribbon typescript, with manuscript corrections, of the first edition of one of the best-selling and most influential books of the 20th century. INQUIRE FOR MORE DETAILS.
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Aristoteles Master-piece, or, The Secrets of Generation displayed in all the parts thereof [Aristotle’s Masterpiece]
  • Aristoteles Master-piece
Aristoteles Master-piece
  • Aristoteles Master-piece, or, The Secrets of Generation displayed in all the parts thereof [Aristotle’s Masterpiece]