Sotheby & Co. (London)

(25.5 cm), 46 pp. Lots numbered 1-228. Publisher’s printed yellow wrappers. - The majority of these books were from a collection presented to the Royal Society in 1667 by Henry Howard (afterwards sixth Duke of Norfolk), whose grandfather, the Earl of Arundel, had bought them during his Embassy to Vienna in 1636. Travelling through Nuremberg, Arundel visited the Imhoff Kunstkammer and acquired what remained of the library of Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530), the humanist and friend of Dürer. In addition to the Arundel books, the Royal Society also disposed of other early books, among them Baxter’s “Call to the unconverted” translated into the Massachusetts Indian language by John Eliot (Cambridge, MA 1664); presented to the Society in 1669 by John Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut, and a member of the Society, it proved the most valuable book in the sale, purchased by Rosenbach against Quaritch, for £6800 (now Huntington Library, Rare Books 63563). Numerous stout volumes of Reformation tracts were offered; most were bought by Rosenthal or by E.P. Goldschmidt (the latter’s purchases were offered in Catalogue VII: Incunabula, Humanists, Reformation Tracts from the Library of Willibald Pirckheimer and other sources, 1926). Goldschmidt also bought, for £1000, a copy printed on vellum of the Cicero De officiis, Paradoxa printed at Mainz by Fust and Schöffer, 4 February 1466 (now in the Lilly Library, through acquisition of the George A. Poole collecton). Saleroom report in The Times Literary Supplement, 14 May 1925, p.340. Linda Levy Peck, “Uncovering the Arundel Library at the Royal Society: Changing Meanings of Science and the Fate of the Norfolk Donation” in Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, volume 52 (1998), pp.3-24. Unillustrated issue (also issued with 6 plates). ¶ Ruled in red and priced. A few pencil annotations of later date. Text loosening in wrappers.