Excerpta quaedam

Cambridge: J. Bentham, 1765. FIRST EDITION. The first ten pages contain a list of subscribers (mainly from Oxford and Cambridge) and a corrigenda. With12 folding plates. Bound in old boards, rebacked, a clean and crisp copy, uncut. First edition of this rather rare series of excerpts from Newton’s Principia. “Although there is no mention of it in the book itself, the annotators were John Jebb, M.D., Rector of Ovington, Robert Thorp, Archdeacon of Northumberland, and Francis Wollaston, Rector of Chislehurt” (Babson).

In addition to the myriad of books explaining the mathematics of Newton’s masterpiece published in the hundred years following the first edition, the public clamored for copies and excerpts from the book itself. Jebb (1736-1786) was a medical doctor and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Thorp (1783-1862) succeeded his father as rector of Chillingham and in 1792 was created archdeacon of Northumberland. In addition to this work, he published a translation of the Principia in English (Mathematical principles of natural philosophy, London, 1777). Wollaston (1738-1826), a mathematician and son of the astronomer Francis Wollaston, was a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Babson 15; Wallis 20.