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Harley MS 3360
- Record Id:
- 040-001616506
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-001616506
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001515.0x000339
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 3360
- Title:
- Thomas Hobbes, A minute or first Draught of the Optiques
- Scope & Content:
-
Thomas Hobbes's unpublished tract on optics, A minute or first Draught of the Optiques, dedicated to William Cavendish, marquis of Newcastle. It contains a title page (f. 1r), the dedication to Cavendish (ff. 2r-4r), a list of contents (ff. 5r-5v), and Hobbes's tract on optics in two parts (ff. 6r-71r and 72v-193r).
Decoration:
Numerous diagrams and an explanatory image showing the connection between the eye and the brain (f. 6r).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
Harley Science Project - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-001616506", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3360: Thomas Hobbes, A minute or first Draught of the Optiques" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-001616506 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 3360 : Thomas Hobbes, A minute or first Draught of the Optiques - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[3361]/040-001616506
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_3360 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1646
- End Date:
- 1646
- Date Range:
- 1646
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Paper.
Dimensions: 225 x 165 mm (text space: 175 x 115 mm).
Foliation: viii + 193 + unfoliated leaf after f. 71. Original pagination starts on f. 1r: pp. 1-131 (part 1) and on f. 73r: pp.1-242
Script: Italica.
Binding: British Museum in-house binding; rebound in 1964.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Paris, written in 1646.
Provenance:
Thomas Hobbes (b. 1588, d. 1679), philosopher: written for him in Paris as a presentation copy to William Cavendish (bap. 1593, d. 1676), marquis of Newcastle, later first duke of Newcastle upon Tyne, writer, patron, and royalist army officer: dedication (ff. 2r-4r).
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts: inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley, ‘7 August 1724’ (unfoliated flyleaf) and mentioned as 'Optiques by Thomas Hobbes; at Paris 1646, 4to' in The Diary of Humfrey Wanley (1966).
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 3360.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II: 1723-1726, p. 303.
Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 191.
Gary B. Herbert, ‘Hobbes's Phenomenology of Space’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 48 (1987), 709-17 (p. 710).
Lisa T. Sarasohn, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Duke of Newcastle: A Study in the Mutuality of Patronage before the Establishment of the Royal Society’, Isis, 90 (1999), 715-37 (p. 721).
Timothy Raylor, ‘Hobbes, Payne, and A Short Tract on First Principles', The Historical Journal, 44 (2001), 29-58 (pp. 30, 49).
Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13400, accessed on 14 Nov 2011]
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)