Introduction a L'Histoire Generale et Politique de L'Univers

Introduction a L'Histoire Generale et Politique de L'Univers

Mr. [Samuel] le Baron de Pufendorff, book's author

Amsterdam: Chez Zacharie Chatelain

1732

Nouvelle edition

Katherine Owens researched and wrote the event description in 2018.

For a description of the book, please click on the image of the event label/description or scroll to the bottom of the page for the section entitled "Text" for a transcription of the attached document.

History

SPECIAL D18 .P84 1732

French, book's contents
English, event description

This book has another record in the "Beautiful Books" Lobby Display Collection.
To see this book on November 15, 2018 in the “Event Photographs” Collection, please go here [Photograph of Books] 05448 and here [Photograph of Books] IMG_0587.

Transcription of event description:

INTORDUCTION A L’HISTOIRE GENERALE ER POLITIQUE DE L’UNIVERS | MR. [SAMUEL] LE BARON DE PUFENDORFF | AMSTERDAM: CHEZ ZACHARIE CHATELAIN | 1732 | NOUVELLE ED.

It is with the most profound disappointment that we admit defeat in determining who the original owner of this book was. The tool on the front and back cover is an armorial, or the original owner’s mark. Wealthy book collectors had their coats-of-arms cut in type so that when they had a book bound, the stamp was given to the binder to use to mark the covers of the book. This coat-of-arms is very interesting because it has an international flavor: the crown denotes a connection with a royal family and is in the same style as found in Italian armorials; the scroll around the center circle looks like the Imperial Russian double-headed eagle; and the rampant lion is Scottish; but the text was printed in The Netherlands!

On the spine you see the encircled rampant lion and two stars in the compartments between the raised bands. The two empty compartments would have at one time had colored leather inserts upon which the title and volume or author information was stamped in gold. The back endpaper has become detached revealing the sewing structure. The three lines of incongruous scrollwork fills out the rest of the bottom compartment because there is no sewing band where there should have been. The leather has shrunk and no longer fits the covers. The gilt decoration that you see along part of the top and fore-edge would have wrapped around the edges and into the square. The endpapers are a comb marble design in red, white, blue, and a hint of green and yellow.

Once inside the book, the international flavor continues; the author was the son of a poor German Lutheran minister who was given a good education and became the private tutor for Sweden’s ambassador to Denmark before being invited to be professor at the University of Heidelburg from 1661 to 1668. In 1668 he was offered a professorship at the newly founded University of Lund in Sweden. His areas of writing were in natural law, philosophy, and history. One of his pupils was an American who helped shape the differences between civil and religious liberties in the American Colonies. This book is a French language edition of Einleitung zu der Histoire der Vornehmsten Reiche und Staaten…in Europa (1682) or Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms and States...in Europe.

Book / Unpublished Print Document