Micrographia Restaurata:

£20,000 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A new edition, said by Keynes to have been edited by Henry Baker (1698-1774), which includes thirty of Hooke’s original plates and with three re-engraved. A re-issue with a cancel title-page was published in 1780. An intriguing coy of an 18th-century edition of Robert Hooke’s important Micrographia. The present copy contains many lengthy manuscript annotations and a number of additional drawings by an as yet unidentified owner which suggest a reader who was also experimenting with microscopes and familiar with many of the European natural history collections. Keynes writes of this edition: “The volume is said to have been edited by Henry Baker (1698-1774), author of The Microscope made Easy , 1742. It is explained in the Preface that Hooke’s original copper-plates had recently been discovered, lacking seven, in good condition except for a little rust. The five plates of diagrams, with less popular appeal than the others, have been omitted. Comparison of the prints, with the original impressions in Micrographia shews that three, as noted above, have been re-engraved, and were therefore among the seven missing. The text has been reduced to brief descriptive notes. Though the pages are fewer, their area has been much increased, so that all the plates except those of the Flea and the Louse could be bound in without folding” (p.26) The present copy has a manuscript attribution to “Dr: Baker, F: R: S:” on the title-page and each of the plates have been carefully numbered. Many of t

• Year: 1745

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