Provenance:  Front pastedown rubber-stamped by the Library of the Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Remnants of a private library bookplate on front pastedown.

•  ESTC R18390; Wing (rev. ed.) C388.   A “poor scholar's copy”: rebinding would help immensely. 19th-century half leather over marbled paper-covered boards; very worn, covers detached, text split into sections. Previous owner's signature at top of title-page, ink numeral at bottom margin of p. [5], first (blank) page and last page reinforced with archival tape at inner edge, covering a portion of the errata and advertisement. Staining and a little soiling; marginal chips and tears. Volume now housed in a simple, acid-free phase box.  (17726)

Provenance:  17th-century signature of Thomas Stewarte on title-page of 1568 Secretes.

•  Secretes (1568): STC (rev. ed.) 297; ESTC S100482; Notaker, Printed Cookbooks in Europe, 1470-1700, 503; Ames & Herbert, IV, 468; Graesse, I, 68; Ferguson, I, p. 22 (for parts 1, 2, 3). Seconde part: ESTC S100483; STC (rev. ed.) 302. Thyrde part: ESTC S100485; STC (rev. ed.) 306. Verye excellent: STC (rev. ed.) 309; ESTC S100486.   19th-century vellum over boards; mystical gilt center device on each board; a plain binding hinting at the secrets it contains. Expectable stains, including on first title-page, with light waterstaining variously. Last leaf of 1568 Secretes reinforced on blank verso; leafcast repairs to fore- and bottom margins of last three leaves of the fourth and last title. Marginalia, some trimmed, in text and especially in the index of the Thyrde part. Over all, good copies of all four parts. A terrific compendium and a great, great “read.”  (37205)

This example particularly showcases the “True Relation,” as the separate title-page for that item is the first leaf present here; the title-page and preface for the Defence are absent.

•  ESTC T189434; Lowndes 616–17; Allibone 490.   Recent quarter mottled calf and marbled paper–covered sides, leather edges blind-tooled, spine with gilt-stamped leather labels, gilt-dotted raised bands, and gilt-stamped decorations in compartments. First three pages institutionally pressure-stamped, lower (closed) edges rubber-stamped; title-page with inked and rubber-stamped numerals in lower margin. Frontispiece, main title-page, preface to Christian's Defence, and final leaf lacking (the last interrupting the text of a brief account of Drelincourt's life). Title-page stained with inner margin reinforced and tear repaired some time ago. Pages browned, foxed, and stained, first and last few with edges tattered; some corners dog-eared. Two leaves torn, without loss of text; one leaf with outer margin chipped, affecting four words without loss of sense. A book often “read to death” . . .  (25807)

Provenance:  Stamps of two U.S. Redemptorist libraries (one in Ilchester, MD; the other in New York state).

•  VD17 1:001581Y; DeBacker-Sommervogel, II, 1899; Robbins 283; Graesse, Magica, 47; Coumont, Demonology and Witchcraft, D45.3.   Contemporary limp vellum with slightly yapp edges, evidence of now-lacking ties; vellum soiled, front joint (outside) with excellent repair, new endpapers. Scattered waterstains; discoloration in some margins from old damp; some gatherings and individual leaves browned, as in all other copies seen. Title-page trimmed at top, not quite into plate; without the folding table in Book II; old library stamps in some margins and an old sticker. A solid, satisfying copy.  (33026)

•  NSTC 2S31074. Removed from a nonce volume. Clean save for some smudging to outer margin of one page.  (16760)

Provenance:  Front fly-leaf with elegantly written 17th-century inked inscription (in Latin) noting the book was a gift to “Gulielmo Seeke” from William Pudsey, a graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford; below the inscription Seeke has calligraphically signed his name in English. First main text page with early inked inscription of Joseph Moses; title-page rubber-stamped by the Charles Holbrook Library of the Pacific School of Religion (properly released, with bookplate laid in).

•  Coumont, Demonology and Witchcraft, G38.3; ESTC R21168; Wing (rev. ed.) G800–819.   Period-style speckled calf, framed in double blind fillets, spine with gilt-stamped title-label, blind-ruled raised bands, and blind-tooled compartment decorations. Ex-library as above, title-page verso with rubber-stamped numeral and shadow of pencilled numeral, one text page with rubber-stamp in lower margin, touching one word without obscuring sense. Pp. 121/22 supplied in fine facsimile. Faint age-toning and occasional light spotting, with offsetting to margins of first and last few leaves; short tear in upper margins of first two leaves of dedication.A solid and handsomely bound copy of a frankly spellbinding text.  (36381)

•  ESTC S119701; STC (2nd ed.), 13326.   18th-century speckled calf, highly polished covers nicely panelled in blind with well-proportioned rules and rolls, board edges ruled in gilt; rebacked with modern black leather gilt spine label, new endpapers, and preliminary blank (only) lacking. Light and limited waterstaining to top margins, light age-toning with the occasional spot, some very minor marginal wormtracking, and a few creases or short closed tears; a handful of small holes affecting type but not sense, one lost corner not affecting type. Occasional ink/pencil markings, generally minimalist but in one case flourishing into a memorable manicule.Interesting reading from a variety of perspectives in a handsome and well designed volume.  (37283)

This author enjoyed great success among feminine (and young) audiences with his gothic tales of horror and woe, most notably with his one novel, The Monk, a youthful production that earned him his nickname. Shelley was especially fond of Lewis's work, although Byron mocked the author's “gibb'ring spectres” and “infernal brain” in the poem “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.”

•  NCBEL, III, 743 (first ed.).   Later 19th-century half sheep in imitation of morocco over marbled paper sides, worn and abraded; leather chipping over head of spine, covers pressure-stamped by a now-defunct institution, spine with paper shelving label. Title-page and several others stamped; endpaper and final blank separated but present (former with date slip); many pages, not unexpectedly, show light to moderate spots of foxing, and there is some staining. Last leaf torn across outer corner taking top author's name in ads on verso (it was John Beckmann) and most of three words of the last poem's last verse (“herte should breke”).  (5414)

Printed with a two-page, small-type list of the subscribers to this Irish edition, some entries noting a profession or a locality.

•  Wallis, Newton, 328.2; ESTC T18642.   Recent full brown calf, Cambridge style binding: Round spine, raised bands accented with single gilt rules above and below each, gilt center device in five spine compartments; black spine label, gilt. Covers tooled in blind with center compartment with corner devices; new endpapers. Old rubber-stamp along inner margin of title, with another to lower margin of dedication page and an inked line of presentation to its gutter; age-toning and stray stains. A good+ copy of the uncommon Dublin edition.  (33120)

•  Publisher's quarter green cloth with paper-covered boards. Rebacked in sympathetic cloth and new paper label (antique style) applied. Boards show age-stains and wear but are solid. Old library pressure-stamp on title-page. In an open back slipcase of green library cloth; spine of box with author, title, and call number in gilt. A nice copy, sound for reading.  (21773)

•  ESTC R13646; Wing (rev. ed.) N1399; Arber, Term Cat., I. 112.   Recently rebacked old calf, red leather label and gilt lettering, ruling, and floral stamps on spine; boards rubbed with some loss of leather and corners sometime strengthened, new endpapers with light pencilling. Bookplate as above, light age-toning with a handful of small spots/stains, two gatherings with minuscule marginal wormtracking, one leaf with inked marginal notes smeared. A few leaves with a paper flaw, printshop stain, or gently rubbed type; two with a small piercing away from print and several more with a short marginal tear or chip, others missing a corner or sliver of margin but text completely present. A solid and enjoyable book of “secrets” ready to share its secrets with someone new.  (36986)

The volume begins with a most handsome emblematic engraved title-page signed C. De Mallery involving a ship at sea against a sky labeled “Lutetia” (for Paris) surmounting an elaborate architectural frame containing the title and incorporating elegant symbolic ladies and more, followed on the next leaves by a dedication to the esteemed French collector Jacques-Auguste de Thou (Thuanus, 1553–1617). Beautiful floriated woodcut initials, factotum initials, head- and tailpieces decorate the text, which is anexquisite example of printing.

It seems that there were related texts printed at the same time that are sometimes found bound with this in a variety of combinations, but this not universally.

•  Adams S1061; Schweiger, I, 287.   Period-style full dark brown mottled calf tooled in blind, gilt title and tools to spine, red edges. Small hole from natural flaw in upper corner of title-page and one other leaf; oval-shaped spot in lower margin of title-page from an erasure (?), offset onto the front fly-leaf; light age-toning and occasional foxing in some margins, with a few stray ink marks from printing and maybe two or three dots from oxidization of the paper. Accounting for these minor expectable flaws, the present volume isreally very, very nice and the portraits areterrific.  (30177)

Toxites (born Johann Michael Schütz) was poet laureate of Holy Roman Emperor under Charles V, himself an alchemist, and, like Paracelsus, a doctor.

Evidence of readership: The recto of the front free endpaper is filled withquotations from the Bible that the reader feels bear on the text of the first tract; the verso of same bears an extensive quotation from Toxites' foreword to Paraceleus' Astronomia magna. At least one reader has written commentary in the margins of both texts and even written miniscule inter-liner corrections, observations, or explanations of words. Some marginalia is merely “indexing” so as to be able to re-find a text section by keyword in the margin; other marginalia tie concepts in the texts to other published texts. In the blank area below the colophon and continuing on the blank verso of that same leaf is an extensive quotation from Georg Forberger followed by more quotations from the Bible that are apposite to Paracelsus' text.

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only four copies in U.S. libraries and searches via COPAC, VD16, and KVK find precious few in Britain or Europe.

•  Sudhoff 141; Ritter, p. 1144; Wellcome 4788; Durling 3494; VD16 P611. Not found in Gerguson or Duveen. On “electron,” see: C.J.S. Thompson, The Lure and Romance of Alchemy (London: Harrap, 1932), p. 42; and cited in Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: Karger, 1982), fn. 230, p. 87.   19th-century tan half pigskin and marbled boards, with remnants of an old paper label. Front free endpaper and title-leaf loosening, moderately browned, good margins; overall a rather nice copy of aremarkably scarce work of pharmaceutical and alchemical science.  (37189)

•  Drake 4017.   Uncut, stitched, partly unopened.  (21434)

Additional volumes continued to be published for many years, under the stewardship of other editors; Stenzel was responsible for I through V.

•  Recent black-flecked paper–covered boards, spines with printed paper title and volume labels. Some upper edges in vol. I and lower corners in vol. II bumped; all edges stained red except for vol. III, which has speckled edges. Vol. III (only) with light offsetting/show-through from print; in fact a clean, nice set. (25346)

Evidence of Readership: Underlining or other markings in a number of the pamphlets in very neat ink and pencil, sometimes colored.

•  Recent navy blue cloth, printed paper label on spine with gilt ruling and decoration, new endpapers; all pamphlet wrappers bound in text. Marked as above, one pamphlet with label residue to front wrapper.  (36132)