TUNSTALL, Cuthbert.

by Cuthbert Tunstall

£32,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

First edition of the first English book wholly on arithmetic, by the great Catholic humanist, Cuthbert Tunstall (1474-1559). The work was Tunstall s farewell to secular scholarship as he was made Bishop of London a few days after its publication, and thereafter Lord Privy Seal. He wrote it so that his friends could make their own calculations and no longer be cheated by money changers. It is designed as a practical work on arithmetic with the emphasis on commercial transactions, undoubtedly based on models Tunstall encountered during his studies in Padua. The book includes many business applications of the day, such as partnership, profit and loss and exchange. It also includes the rule of false, the rule of three and numerous applications of these and other rules. It is, however, the work of a scholar and a classicist rather than a businessman. Smith p.134, It is dedicated to his particular friend Thomas More, who, the previous year had been appointed sub-Treasurer of England, because there was no more appropriate dedicatee than the man engaged in supervising the finances of the King This was also the return of the compliment which, six years earlier, More had paid Tunstall in the opening lines of the Utopia. The work was actually rather too scholarly for ordinary businessmen and it was not reprinted in England. However, it achieved some success on the continent and Rabelais (Oeuvres II 222) mentions it as required reading for the young Gargantua in Paris; it was also prescr

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.