Authors starting with M from B & L Rootenberg Rare Books & Manuscripts

Toast-coloured boards with parchment spine; on deckled paper. A fine copy. Mackail was Morris's biographer and Edward Burne-Jones' son-in-law. The speech illustrates how Morris's politics and craftwork were inextricable linked.... more information

Frontispiece and 11 engraved plates. Original navy buckram, gilt lettering to spine, some light wear and small scratches to covers; endpapers spotted. Uncut and mostly unopened. Presentation inscription to fly-leaf from author’s wife. Limited edition, number 279 of 415 large paper copies. A collection of seven stories about Scottish rural life, the last entitled A doctor of the old school. The book was enormously popular in both Great Britain and America, and went through several translations into the ... more information

Title in green and blue within decorative floral border, frontispiece, 30 plates and 25 text illustrations. Original publisher’s cloth over beveled boards, hinges starting; all edges gilt. Ownership inscription to fly-leaf. First edition of this collection of tales about the life of a nineteenth century Scottish country doctor. BMC, XVI, 314; Osler, 5574 (5th ed.)... more information

including 3 half-titles, 2 prefaces, and a 2-page glossary. Red publisher’s cloth, top panel and inner flaps of dust-jacket laid-in; uncut. Ownership inscription to fly-leaf. Later edition. Some of the people covered are Anne Boleyn, Napoleon I, Ivan the Terrible and Nietzsche.... more information

Frontispiece and 3 plates. Original blue publisher’s cloth; preliminaries and last few pages lightly spotted. Ninth impression of the author’s first collection of medico-historical essays. Covers the medical backgrounds and their historical impact of such figures as Mr. & Mrs. Pepys, Jeanne D’Arc and Don Quixote. BMC, XVI, 338 (1st eds.)... more information

Frontispiece and 7 plates. Original publisher’s cloth; endpapers browned, some very light scattered interior spotting. Ownership inscription to front fly-leaf. First edition, second impression. This is the author’s second book of essays on the health, diseases and phobias of many great historical figures, and how these affected the course of history. The first collection of essays, entitled Post mortem, proved so popular that he was beseiged by letters from readers wanting more. Includes essays on... more information

With subscriber's list, errata, and six folding engraved plates. Lacking the half-title and publisher’s ads. A handsome copy in contemporary half calf and marbled boards. First edition of this author's defense of the most controversial points of Newton's cosmology, as well as his theories of celestial motion and gravity. Published posthumously by subscription for the benefit of the author's family, this edition contains a biography of Maclaurin by Patrick Murdoch (d. 1744), still the pr... more information

Woodcut illustrations throughout the text. Contemporary half-morocco over marbled boards, rebacked, marbled endpapers. A fine copy with the bookplate of Nicholas Toke on the paste-down. First edition. "This charming ‘autobiography' tells the adventures of the famous gold-headed cane, sucessively in the possession of Radcliffe, Mead, Askew, William and David Pitcairn, and Baillie, and then retired to a glass case in the library of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Besides good biogra... more information

Bound in cloth, title in gilt on spine, spine quite faded; interior lightly spotted, still a very good copy. Second edition of Magendie’s classic work, containing his many discoveries in experimental physiology, a number of which were important to neurophysiology. “He extensively studied the cerebrospinal fluid, which he regarded as a secretion of the pia-arachnoid membrane. Although he reversed the direction of fluid flow, his studies were the first important ones since Cotugno and included a de... more information

Printers device on title-page and on last verso leaf of colophon. Woodcut borders and charts, text illustrations, diagrams and tables throughout. Each year has a separate title as well as pages dealing variously with the calculations of the movements of celestial bodies, planetary positions, solar and lunar eclipses, festivals, annual revolutions, fixed stars, and much more. Contemporary vellum; text browned with some sections waterstained, still generally, a very good copy from the library of Owen Gingeric... more information

Title with printer's device, decorative initials and headpieces, woodcut illustrations and tables throughout, many full-page. Colophon at the end of the first work and on the last leaf. Full calf in a contemporary style, gilt fleuron in centre and on corners; a fine copy of a great rarity. First edition of Magini's famous mathematical treatise, his scarcest work. This important text includes his great tabula tetragonica, de planis triangulis, works on altitude and distance, and his writings on trig... more information

The original hand coloured print. Corners chipped and portions torn away, a one inch edge of right margin over halfway up from the bottom torn away, approximate 2 ? inch stain in lower left portion of image. Matted ... more information

The original hand coloured print. Edges chipped and portions of corners torn away, spotting over image, 2 tears (4 ? and 6 inches, respectively), repaired, affecting image. Matted ... more information

With 4 portraits. Full marbled calf, re-backed, covers with gilt floral border, front cover a bit rubbed. Bookplate for Henry William Shaw. This annual publication lists detailed obituaries for "remarkable" men who had died during the previous year. In this volume, for 1825, among the important deceased were painter Jacques-Louis David and naturalist the Comte de Lacépède. Mahul (1795-1871) was a French editor of scientific works. He compiled and published the Annuaire n&e... more information

With 15 folding engraved plates, woodcut chapter vignette, head- and tailpieces. Contemporary calf, raised bands on gilt spine; marbled paste-downs, some minor browning but overall a very nice copy. First edition of this classic work on the aurora borealis, the Northern lights, the first comprehensive treatise devoted entirely to the subject. Mairan attributed the phenomenon to an extension of the sun’s atmosphere, which at times enveloped the earth and blended with our own atmosphere. “Inquiry into the... more information

Disbound. Heavy contemporary annotations. Only edition of this unrecorded dissertation by Maloet (1684-1742), an esteemed doctor who published on a variety of subjects during his lifetime. Maloet maintained that "life spirit" is housed in the blood. He describes how the blood's chemical process of respiration produces the heat responsible for animation and movement.... more information

With 48 tipped in hand-coloured plates by Russell Flint. Number 273 of 500 copies printed on handmade Riccardi paper. The lettering of the title pages engraved after the design by M. Engall. Finely bound in full blue levant morocco by Bayntum Riviere, Bath, gilt spine in 6 compartments, all edges gilt and elaborate inner dentelles; some fading to the colour on spines, but an immaculate set in superb condition, preserved in a slipcase. Number 273 of 500 copies printed. From the text of William Caxton, edited... more information

With numerous decorative woodcut initials, historiated head- and tailpieces, and 14 illustrations (1 half-tone reproduction of original cover of Le Morte d'Arthur). Quarter-calf over vellum boards, gilt floral designs on upper covers, gilt backstrip and top edges; covers slightly warped, head of spine with small crack, last several leaves with dampstain at upper corner (not affecting illustrations), otherwise a clean copy. This lavishly illustrated portfolio was issued in conjunction with the third edi... more information

Written on both sides United States to Henry S. Waterhouse, Physician, Dr. For attending upon the sick soldiers belonging to the 9th Regiment of New York Detached Militia stationed at the French Mills County of Franklin, from the 1st day of December, 1812 to the 8th day of January, 1813, both days inclusive at Forty Eight Dollars per month, amounting in the whole to Sixty Dollars Eighty Cents ... $60.80 ... to certify that Dr. Henry S. Waterhouse has faithfully performed the abovementioned (with additional ... more information

Complete with all blanks and the engraved portrait of Eustachio Divini. Woodcut on title-page of a telescope, woodcut illustrations and diagrams in the text, and decorative ornaments. Contemporary vellum; repairs to bottom margin of title leaf and dedication, 2 small marginal holes (none of which affects the text), some foxing, but generally a very good copy with the ownership inscription of a Carmelite Order and a library stamp on the title-page. With a few manuscript corrections and additions in the text... more information