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The last work written by Christiaan Huygens in English translation

HUYGENS, Christiaan.
The celestial worlds discover'd: or, conjectures concerning the inhabitants, plants and productions of the worlds in the planets.

With spherical illustrations on 5 folding engraved plates.

With spherical illustrations on 5 folding engraved plates.

With spherical illustrations on 5 folding engraved plates.

With spherical illustrations on 5 folding engraved plates.

With spherical illustrations on 5 folding engraved plates.



The second edition, corrected and enlarged. London, James Knapton, 1722. Small 8vo. Contemporary calf, spine ribbed and gilt, red sprinkled edges. With spherical illustrations on 5 folding engraved plates. VI, 162 pp.

Although called the second, this is in fact the third edition of the English translation of this last and most interesting work by the famous Dutch scientist  Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) on the celestial world, the planets and planetoids. Apart from important new ideas about the measurement of the distances between the planets and the size of the celestial bodies, the book also contains Huygens's speculations about life on other planets, which are - as he stated himself in the introduction - not at all contrary to the Holy Scripture.
Although Huygens mentioned the receipt of the first printed leaf of the original Latin edition from the printer André Moetjens in the last letter he wrote on the 4th of March 1695 - a few days before his death -, the printing wasn't completed before 1698 and the book was in fact published posthumously by Moetjens in The Hague under the title, Ko?µo?ewpoç, sive de terris coelstibus, earumque ornatu, conjecturae. A few weeks earlier he had informed his brother Constantijn, the then secretary of King-Stadtholder William III and to whom the book is dedicated - in a letter of 7 January, that he had completed the work.
The book was awaited ardently, especially in England and an English translation already appeared in the same year, followed as soon as the next year by a second edition, both printed by André Moetjens in The Hague. A Dutch translation was published in 1699 (2nd ed.: 1717); a French translation in 1702 (2nd ed.: 1718) and a German one in 1703. The present English edition is the first printed in England.

Good copy, with the cancelled bookplate of the John Crerar Library, Chicago and the bookplate of the Earl of Pembroke in a engraved cartouche.- (Binding slightly rubbed, front cover half loose).
Bierens de Haan 2227; Huygens, Oeuvres, XXI, p.653-842: edition and extensive introduction to the work.

Related Subjects: Astronomy & Cosmography  Dutch  English  Engravings  Science 

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