Lot 80
Aristotle
Opera omnia quae extant
The Library of James Stirling, Mathematician
Auction: 23 October 2025 from 13:00 GMT
Description
Graece et Latine … Sed novissimae huic editioni quae hactenus prodierunt, ornatissimae accessit brevis ac perpetuus in omnes Aristotelis libros commentarius … Authore Guillelo Du Val. Paris: Typis Regiis, 1619. 2 volumes, folio in sixes (40 x 26.2cm), contemporary reversed calf ruled in blind, edges dyed red, signatures a6 e6 i4 a-p6 A-5P6, a2 A-L6 a4 b-5c6 5d4, [32] 1251 [37], [4] 1104 [31] pp., title-pages printed in red and black with engraved portrait vignettes, Greek and Latin text in parallel columns, woodcut and type-ornaments headpieces, woodcut factotums, folding table (between leaves d4-5 in volume 1), occasional inked marginalia (volume 1 p. 933, volume 2 pp. 89, 92, 471-491, loss to spine-ends, ties perished, title-pages slightly marked and damp-stained, occasional damp-staining elsewhere (e.g. volume 1 quire R, a few quires towards centre of volume 2, etc.) [cf. Renouard 219.5 for the 1629 edition]
Provenance
Each volume with the contemporary ownership inscription ‘Dominus factus est justitia nostra, Thomas Warmstry’ to the front free endpaper: this is possibly the royalist Anglican clergyman Thomas Warmstry or Warmstrey (c.1610-1665), who served as dean of Worcester and is remembered for his 1658 work The Baptized Turk.
Footnote
Renouard implies that this edition was to an unspecified extent the work of Antoine Estienne (1592-1674), noting that he signed the colophon of the 1629 ‘Typis Regiis’ edition, and was therefore likely to have been 'no stranger to the printing of the two editions of 1619 and 1639'. Estienne held the title of king's printer (imprimeur du roi) from 1615. ‘For more than 50 years he followed his profession in a manner worthy of his ancestors … It was the Société des éditions grecques, of which he was a member, for whom he printed the beautiful Greek-Latin edition of Aristotle … [of] 1629. It is believed that the editions of Aristotle of 1619 and 1639, published by the same Society, were also printed by him, at least in part’ (Hoefer, Nouvelle biographie générale, 1856, vol. 16, cols. 555-6).