Woodcut printer’s device on title & another on verso of last leaf. Many woodcut diagrams throughout and numerous fine & large woodcut initials. 4 p.l., 587, [1] pp. Folio, cont. blind-stamped panelled pigskin over beveled wooden boards (minor worming at beginning, touching some letters), orig. clasps (one defective) and catches, 19th-cent. morocco lettering pieces on spine. Basel: J. Herwagen, 1537.

First Basel edition; this is the first complete assemblage of the Euclidean texts, with printings of both Campanus of Navara’s and Bartolomeo Zamberti’s versions. It also contains the new Preface by Philipp Melanchthon which in many copies, according to Thomas-Stanford, was removed by the... More about Elementorum Geometricorum. Lib. XV. Cum Expositione Theonis in Priores XIII à Bartholomaeo...

Woodcut printer’s device of the golden compass on title. 119 pp. Small 8vo, 18th-cent. Belgian mottled calf (head of spine a little chipped, joints rubbed), sides gilt, spine gilt, red morocco lettering piece on spine (label partly flaked away). Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1570.

[as usual, bound after]:

PHILIP II, King of Spain. Philippi II. Regis Catholici Edictum De Librorum prohibitorum catalogo observando. Woodcut printer’s device of the golden compass on title. 8 unnumbered leaves. Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1570. More about cum Regulis confectis per Patres a Tridentina Synodo delectos, auctoritate Sanctiss. D. N. Pij...

1 p.l., 203 pp. 8vo, orig. wrappers (some foxing throughout). Freiburg im Breisgau: Zehnder, [1794 or -95].

First edition. Censorship in Austria in the second half of the 18th century was an “on or off” matter. During the reign of the liberal Joseph II (1780-92), censorship was rather relaxed. But during the reigns of Leopold II (1790-92) and Francis II (1792-1835), censorship practices again tightened in reaction to the revolutionary events in France.

This is a list of recently published “forbidden” books, for the most part issued between 1783 to 1794. There were four major groups of forbidden titles: pornographic French “gallant”... More about Katalog. Der von 1783. bis 1794. in Oesterreich von der hochlöblichen...

36 pp. Small 8vo, modern boards. Berlin: “Im Verlag der Kōnigl. Preuss. akadem. Kunst- und Buchhandlung,” 1789.

First separate edition, originally published in the same year in the Berlinischen Journal für Aufklärung. This work was written in response to the newly enacted censorship edict, in which King Friedrich Wilhelm II ordered that all publications and other forms of printed material — including illustrations — be submitted to Prussian state censors for approval. Any critical statements of a political or religious nature were officially discouraged. These restrictions remained in force until the 1840s, with the accession of Friedrich Wilhelm IV to the... More about Einige Gedanken über das Censur-Edikt vom 19. December 1788