[Operae horarum subcisivarum].

the Renaissance man

The first edition in English of the collected thoughts and historical observations of the humanist polymath Philipp Camerarius (1537-1624).

The work is encyclopaedic in scope, and falls into the category of the Renaissance florilegium or anthology, collecting together observations on a wide range of historical, philosophical, and natural themes drawn from classical authors such as Plato, Plutarch and Pliny, as well as medieval and contemporary sources.

Camerarius was a member of a distinguished Nuremberg family of humanists, jurists, and statesmen, son of the classicist Joachim Camerarius who translated the works of Herodotus, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Homer, Sophocles and others into Latin, and produced the first printed Greek edition of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos.

The text was translated by John Molle from Simon Goulart's French-language edition of book one of Camerarius' Operae horarum subcisivarum sive mediationes historicae ('Labours of my odd moments or historical meditations').

From the library of the Murrays of Dollerie House, near Crieff, Perthshire, with the ownership inscriptions of 'Alexander Murray anno 1702' and 'Jacobis Murravii 1701'. The endpapers are annotated with scientific instruments in pencil, and Hebrew script.

First edition in English; folio in sixes (29.5 x 20 cm); woodcut title, woodcut initials, head and tailpieces, ownership inscription in pen to title and B1 upper margin, title a little soiled with small hole to lower margin, pen and pencil notes and to free endpapers and final blank f., occasional pen marginalia in a contemporary hand, small closed tear to A6 repaired with archival tape, textblock slightly browned at perimeter with some intermittent soiling, more pronounced to quires 2B and 2C; contemporary blind-ruled calf, covers with gilt armorial lozenges (faded), vellum waste paper spine lining, joints and spines ends rubbed with slight loss but holding, very good; [10], 403, [5]pp.

ESTC S944.