The Metaphysics of Aristotle,

first edition in English

The first edition in English of Aristotle's Metaphysics.

The 'Metaphysics', as it has come to be known, is a collection of fourteen separate treatises or books by Aristotle (384-322 BC) which were compiled in the first century BC by a Hellenistic scholar, traditionally identified as Andronicus of Rhodes, into a unitary work on the basis of their thematic similarities.

The term itself, meaning 'the things after the physical things', has been understood in a variety of ways, most simplistically as denoting the literal order of these treatises in the Hellenistic edition of Aristotle's works as coming after those books which deal with the physical world. However, 'it seems undeniable that the different treatises of the collection pursue a general philosophical project or discipline, which Aristotle variously refers to as "wisdom," "first philosophy," or even "theology." Such a discipline is described in the Metaphysics as a theoretical science, as opposed to practical and productive sciences, and it is sharply distinguished from the other two theoretical sciences, physics and mathematics' (Gabriele Galluzzo, 'Aristotle's Metaphysics', Oxford Bibliographies in Classics).

The translator, Thomas Taylor (1750-1835), was something of an autodidact, having received no formal education since dropping out of St. Paul's School in his youth. At this time Taylor was employed as a bank clerk, devoting his spare moments to the study of Aristotle and Plato in the original. 'In 1787 he began to publish translations of works of ancient philosophy, beginning with the earliest of Plotinus's Enneads (i.6), on the "beautiful", and the "Orphic hymns", this latter with a lengthy preface on the life and theology of Orpheus'.

By the date of the publication of the Metaphysics in 1801, Taylor had secured the patronage of the brothers William and George Meredith, and later Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk, who made it possible for Taylor to published the first English translation of Plato's complete works in 1804, revising and finishing the effort begun by Flyuer Sydenham (1710-1787), whom Taylor had known in his later years. These translations made available a vast body of Neo-Platonic thought to an audience not otherwise learned in Greek and Latin, exerting a considerable influence on the mystical tendencies of the Romantic Movement from Coleridge to Shelley, Emerson to the Plato Club.

First edition in English; 4to (31 x 24 cm); old library stamp and de-acquisition overstamp to title-page, further stamp to half-title and verso of final f. of text, light spotting to title and occasionally thereafter; modern half sprinkled calf, marbled paper boards, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece to spine, rough-cut with top-edge occasional unopened towards rear of text-block, very good; [4], lv, [1], 467, [1]pp.