Aristotle's Master-Piece Completed.
Aristotle's Master-Piece Completed.
Frontispiece plate, text illustrations. 130 pages. 18mo, contemporary ¼ calf, minor wear; dampstaining in lower margin scarcely touching text. New York: Company of Flying Stationers, 1793
Second New York edition of a text which was first published in London in 1684, and remained in print through at least 1931. An extraordinarily popular work on midwifery and gynecology which doubled as a general sex education manual for the information-starved members of both sexes. The Greek philosopher Aristotle had nothing to do with the production of the book, which was often sold surreptitiously at taverns or hidden behind the counter at bookshops.
The book pops up in culture in odd places. In 1744, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards attempted to reprimand some young boys in Massachusetts who had got hold of the masterpiece and were using its secret knowledge to tease girls. In Ulysses, James Joyce has his protagonist thumb through Aristotle's Masterpiece in a book stall. The book "provided a kind of sex education to the masses long before the concept of sex education was invented"--Mary Fissell, "When the Birds and the Bees Were Not Enough: Aristotle's Masterpiece," in the Public Domain Review, 29 August 2015.
A full-page woodcut on page 15 shows "the Form of a Child in the Womb, disrobed of its Tunicles proper and common." The frontispiece and six smaller woodcuts in the text depict "monstrous births," placing the blame in part to "the Imagination of the parents."
The three earliest American editions appear to be Boston in 1766, New York in 1788, and this 1793 New York edition, all produced by printers who chose to remain anonymous. We trace no other 18th-century American printings at auction since 2015.
Austin, American Medical Imprints 61; Evans 25120.
5 1/2 x 3 1/4 in. (14 x 8.3 cm.)
Aristotle's Master-Piece Completed.
Frontispiece plate, text illustrations. 130 pages. 18mo, contemporary ¼ calf, minor wear; dampstaining in lower margin scarcely touching text. New York: Company of Flying Stationers, 1793
Second New York edition of a text which was first published in London in 1684, and remained in print through at least 1931. An extraordinarily popular work on midwifery and gynecology which doubled as a general sex education manual for the information-starved members of both sexes. The Greek philosopher Aristotle had nothing to do with the production of the book, which was often sold surreptitiously at taverns or hidden behind the counter at bookshops.
The book pops up in culture in odd places. In 1744, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards attempted to reprimand some young boys in Massachusetts who had got hold of the masterpiece and were using its secret knowledge to tease girls. In Ulysses, James Joyce has his protagonist thumb through Aristotle's Masterpiece in a book stall. The book "provided a kind of sex education to the masses long before the concept of sex education was invented"--Mary Fissell, "When the Birds and the Bees Were Not Enough: Aristotle's Masterpiece," in the Public Domain Review, 29 August 2015.
A full-page woodcut on page 15 shows "the Form of a Child in the Womb, disrobed of its Tunicles proper and common." The frontispiece and six smaller woodcuts in the text depict "monstrous births," placing the blame in part to "the Imagination of the parents."
The three earliest American editions appear to be Boston in 1766, New York in 1788, and this 1793 New York edition, all produced by printers who chose to remain anonymous. We trace no other 18th-century American printings at auction since 2015.
Austin, American Medical Imprints 61; Evans 25120.
5 1/2 x 3 1/4 in. (14 x 8.3 cm.)
