Simon Roberts
Senior Valuer
Lot 137•
SWAN (JOHN)]
Speculum Mundi or a Glasse Representing the Face of the World; Shewing Both that is Did Begin, and Must Also End: The Manner How, and Time When, Being Largely Examined. Wheretunto is Joyned an Hexameron, or a Serious Discourse of the Causes, Continuance, and Qualities of Things in Nature
7 June 2011, 14:00 BST
New Bond StreetSold for £1,440 inc. premium
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Footnotes
A fine copy of the first edition Speculum Mundi. John Swan (1605-1671) organized his encylopaedia around the six days of creation, including cosmology, meteorology, mineralogy, zoology, and botany. The diversity is conveyed in the list of contents: "Adulterous men like to the cuckoe", "Alexander deceived by apes", "America. A conjecture how America came at the first to be unknown", "How cunning beggars use to blister their arms and legs", "stuffes made of camels hair", "Cock-fighting", "Comets... why warres, famines, deaths etc. be the effects of comets", "An herb for great-breasted maids", "Metors and their kindes", "Mullet and his properties", "Tobacco.. the names, qualities and vertues therof... the Indian woman take no tobacoo", "Witches, they sell windes to sea-men".