Manhattan Rare Book Company

"Few books in the literature of philosophy have so widely represented the spirit of the age and country in which they appeared, or have so influenced opinion afterwards" (Fraser).

RARE FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE FOUNDATIONAL TEXTS OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY.

The "Basset and Mory" imprint, generally regarded as the second issue.

Locke worked for nearly two decades on his investigation of "the certainty and the adequacy of human knowledge," concluding that "though knowledge must necessarily fall short of complete comprehension, it can at least be 'sufficient'; enough to convince us that we are not at the mercy of pure chance, and can to some extent control our own destiny" (Printing and the Mind of Man). The significance of Locke's Essay (he acknowledged authorship by appending his name to the dedicatory epistle) was immediately recognized: it quickly ran to several editions and was popularized on the Continent by French translations. Locke's work was continued by Hume and Kant, and he was considered by John Stuart Mill to have founded the analytic philosophy of the mind.

This is the "Basset and Mory" issue, generally considered the second issue, with cancel title with the Basset and Mory imprint and inverted "SS" in "Essay". (As opposed to the “Holt issue”, with the Elizabeth Holt imprint, the "ss" of “Essay” correctly printed.)

Note: In his Introduction to the Clarendon Edition of the Essay [Oxford, 1975], Peter Nidditch "estimate[ed] that about 900 copies of the first edition were printed, by far the greater number of them belonging to the Holt issue" (Nidditch, pp. xviii-xix) while Yolton, citing this estimate, claims, "We do not know the number of copies printed; Peter Nidditch has estimated about 900 copies were published, chiefly of the Holt issue. But it is possible there were as few as 500" (Yolton).

London: printed Tho. Basset and sold by Edw. Mory, 1690. Folio (326x193mm), contemporary calf. Neat early owner signature on front free endpaper. Expert repair to joints, spine, and corners. Page 269 with small tear at top edge. Text remarkably clean and fresh.

A beautiful tall, wide-margined copy – one of the tallest on record – of one of the cornerstones of Western philosophy.

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