Hutton, James
Theory of the Earth
£3,276
Auction: 05 February 2025 from 10:00 GMT
Description
or an Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe. [In:] Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Vol. I. Edinburgh: for J. Dickson, 1788. 4to, xii 100 336 209 [3] pp., contemporary calf, Hutton's work comprising pp. 209-304 [2] pp., with 2 engraved plates, occasional light spotting, plate 1 offset onto explanatory text-leaf, 2 further engraved plates elsewhere in the volume (one folding), half-title, engraved vignette to title-page, bookplate (Murray of Auchtertyre, Baronet), joints split, occasional light spotting [Ward & Carozzi 1161; cf. PMM 247].
Together: with volumes 2-8, 1790-1817, all 4to, volumes 2-7 in contemporary calf, volume 8 bound in 2 and in original boards, numerous engraved plates (not collated), a few joints cracked, volumes 5 and 7 front boards detached, spines scuffed, numbering-pieces and a few title-labels perished; and another work (11)
Provenance
From the library of the Murrays of Dollerie, Crieff, Perthshire.
Footnote
First edition of one of the most important scientific papers ever published, which proposed for the first time that geological phenomena were to be explained by immutable laws rather than supernatural intervention, an interpretation which came to be known as ‘uniformitarianism’. The paper was expanded by Hutton for publication in book form, of which the first two volumes of a projected three were published in 1795; the work remained incomplete on Hutton's death in 1797, with the third and final volume, compiled from his notes, not appearing until 1899.