Opticks ... The Second Edition, with Additions.

Offered for sale by Adam Langlands of 'Shadowrock Rare Books' - for more information please contact him via email at [email protected]

Sir Isaac NEWTON (1642-1727). Opticks: or, a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of Light … The Second Edition, with Additions.  London: printed for W. & J. Innys, 1718. Octavo (7 5/8 x 4 5/8in; 193 x 117mm). Pp. [i-viii], 1-382. 12 folding engraved plates of diagrams bound at the end, occasional woodcut tables and diagrams in the text. (Lacking the final advertisement leaf, light overall toning, plates creased and with old dampstaining [see images], 8 shaved within the neat line, a single wormtrack from the title through to about pp.225/226, a second wormtrack at the inner margin of pp.187-214). Contemporary panelled calf (worn, crude repair to joints and head and foot of spine, spine split vertically [see images] so pp. 227-238 almost detached [see image]). Provenance: Rev. Henry Maule (gift inscription dated 1718); A.H. Carries (inscribed twice, dated 1839); Henry Fowler Broadwood (1811-1893, armorial bookplate, by descent); Bertha Marion Broadwood (1846-1935, Henry Fowler Broadwood’s repurposed armorial bookplate).

Newton’s second great masterpiece: second English edition revised and enlarged by Newton. This is also the First Octavo Edition, here in its Second issue form with the title-page dated 1718 (the very rare first issue has a title dated 1717). Most importantly, in this edition "the number of Queries at the end was increased from 16 to 31, including the celebrated Query No. 28 on the nature of light." (Babson, I, p. 67). Babson 134; Gray 176; Wallis 176