The Two Books of Francis Bacon,

Francis Bacon's most important contribution to philosophy, and the only one of his works which he first published in English. An attractive example in contemporary straight-grained red morocco from the library of the Barons Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey.

The Advancement of Learning first appeared in October 1605, the product of two enforced periods of leisure, from March 1603 to March 1604 and then from December 1604 to October 1605. The work is divided into two parts, the first being a defence of the importance of learning to every field of life, the second a survey of the state of human knowledge as it stood at the beginning of the early modern age.

'The book's real importance was not so much its encyclopaedic character but rather its professed aim of propagating the Baconian ideas of the advancement of learning and knowledge, and of the practical means of accomplishing it' (ODNB). This effort was later reiterated in Bacon's ambitious plan to reform the nature of philosophical and scientific enquiry in his unrealsied project, the Instauratio Magna, (the 'great instauration'), of which an expanded edition of the Advancement of Learning was to form the first of six parts.

8vo (16.5 x 10 cm); errata f. tipped-in at rear, armorial bookplate to front pastedown, occasional light toning; contemporary straight-grain red morocco, covers with double gilt filet borders, spine lettered in gilt with the arms in gilt to the lower compartment for device to lower compartment for the Barons Leigh, all edges gilt, spine slightly darkened, a little rubbed, very good; xix, [1], 443, [1]pp.