The works of the learned Sir Thomas Browne

London: Tho. Basset, Ric. Chiswell, etc., 1686. FIRST COLLECTED WORKS. General title in red and black, separate titles for each part. Full-page woodcut illustration opposite the start of Hydriotaphia, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces. Lacking the engraved frontispiece portrait. Contemporary calf, rebacked; a very clean copy from the library of E.N. da C. Andrade with his bookplate on the paste-down, ownership inscription of John Edwards on the fly-leaf and bookplate of Larry C. Parks, M.D. indicating his purchase in Oxford in 1972. First collected edition which includes all of Browne’s major works. Browne (1605-82) received his M.D. at Oxford in 1637. He was a prolific author who wrote on a wide variety of subjects including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric. The Religio medici (A doctor’s religion) represents Browne’s attempt to arrive at a vital concept of faith, one with tolerance, humor and dignity. His Pseudodoxia epidemica, or “vulgar errors” as it was amusingly referred to, contains his numerous observations and experiments in physics, comparative anatomy and biology. The work has become a literary classic and includes the first appearance in English of the term “electricity.”

Keynes 201; Osler 4522; Wing B-5150.