Books and Manuscripts

London: William Innys, 1749. Two parts in one volume. First edition. 4to. Unpaginated (ff. 79; 86, including dedication at front, and index and errata at rear). Edited by John Bevis. Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece portrait of Halley and several charts throughout text. Full contemporary brown calf, red morocco spine label, stamped in gilt; front board detached; old repairs with paper along joints, spine, and corners; boards and extremities worn and scratched; all edges trimmed; front free endpaper, frontispiece, title-page, and first three leaves of text detached together with front board; chipping along edges of front free endpaper, frontispiece, and title-page; old tape repair along gutter of frontispiece and title-page; "No. 64" in contemporary manuscript on front paste-down; old partially erased contemporary ownership signature on title-page, same ownership signature on title-page of second part ("James Wragg 1767"); leaves paginated in a contemporary hand in top corners; leaves generally toned; scattered soiling and spotting to text; dampstaining along bottom edge of some leaves at rear; contemporary mathematical calculations on rear paste-down. Houzeau & Lancaster 12796; Norman 981

An early 20th century typed paper slip mounted on front paste-down states: "This copy of Halley's Tables came from Leary's Old Book Store, where it was received with some other old astronomical books from one of the descendants of David Rittenhouse. (One of these books bore his inscription.) It was therefore probably in Rittenhouse's library, and the one he used when calculating the elements of the Transit of Venus which took place June 3, 1769."

Rare first edition of Edmund Halley's influential lunar and planetary tables. First completed in 1719, they were not published until this edition 30 years later. In it Halley includes calculations of the position of the moon (representing "the theory of motion...as Newton gave it in the second edition of the Principia", Cook, p. 366), tables of the motions of the planets, and cometary tables, including tables related to the "long inequality" between Jupiter and Saturn. Caused by the deacceleration of Saturn and the increased acceleration of Jupiter, this had caused previous planetary charts to be inaccurate, and here, Halley correctly shows that the phenomenon was due to a gravitational attraction between the two planets. An edition in English appeared in 1752, and in French, in 1754.

This edition also includes the second Latin edition of Halley's Synopsis astronomiae cometicae (first published in 1705), showing his discovery that the comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682 were in fact one and the same (and in which he predicted its return, in 1758), and that now bears his name: Halley's Comet.

According to RBH, this is only the third copy offered at auction since 2004.