+ Expand
Provenance: Charles Bernard, surgeon (signature on title, his library sold 22 March 1711) ? Earls of Macclesfield (engraved armorial bookplate on front pastedown and embossed armorial stamp on title, sale Sotheby's 10 June 2004, lot 311)
+ Expand
Literature: Kaestner IV, pp. 99-102; VD17 23:247384D; Warner, Sky Explored, p. 16, 1a
+ Expand
Notes:
First edition of this collection.
Jakob Bartsch (1600-1633) married Kepler's daughter Susanna and was his father-in-law's assistant in his later years. The present work contains a complete cosmographical handbook with 23 worked problems for the student (first published in 1624), a perpetual solar ephemeris by Laurentius Eichstadius, a planetary ephemeris for 25 years from 1662, a star catalogue based on Brahe, Kepler and Severinus, a catalogue of European cities with their coordinates, tables of right and oblique ascensions, a table of polar elevations for Nuremberg by Cyprian Leowitz, and an historical preface by the editor Andreas Goldmayer (d. 1665), astrologer and calendar-maker in Nuremberg, giving a history of the great astronomers of Nuremberg in some detail including lists of their publications.
According to Warner, the positions of the stars charted on Bartsch's three maps are not simply based on a Ptolemaic or Tychonic source ? in the text, he discusses the positions of Brahe, Keyser and Habrecht, and in the star catalogue those of Copernicus, Brahe and Bayer. The date of the present publication, variously reported as 1661 or 1662, is conjectured based on the starting point of the planetary tables, and the use of 1661 in the example on the last page.
Charles Bernard (1650-1711) was elected Surgeon at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London in 1686 and was also Serjeant Surgeon to Queen Anne from 1702. The catalogue of his library numbered 2,873 lots and the sale occupied many days. Jonathan Swift notes in his Journal to Stella that he viewed the exhibition and attended the sale but found that "they were in the middle of the physick books, so I bought none; and they are so dear, I believe I shall buy none ..." though he attended the sale three more times and actually did buy something (cited in J.S. Finch, A Catalogue of the Libraries of Sir Thomas Browne and Dr. Edward Browne, Leiden: 1986, p. 11).
