Beschreibung:

HOBBES, Thomas (1588-1679). Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill . London: printed [by Roger Norton and Richard Cotes] for Andrew Crooke, 1651.
HOBBES, Thomas (1588-1679). Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill . London: printed [by Roger Norton and Richard Cotes] for Andrew Crooke, 1651. 2° (278 x 176mm). Engraved frontispiece, folding letterpress table. (Frontispiece repaired at inner margin, frontispiece and title both slightly browned and soiled at margins, some mainly marginal soiling of text, marginal stains towards end, Aaa recto with tear into bottom line.) Contemporary blind-panelled calf, spine with raised bands and red morocco label (upper joints cracked, spine and corners restored, new endpapers). Provenance : occasional marginalia in a contemporary hand. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, with head ornament on title, after which further printing was prohibited by the Licensers. Norton printed through to quire 2B, and Cotes the rest. Born in the year when the threat of the Spanish Armada produced national panic, Hobbes came to articulate his own fears of social and political chaos in the aftermath to the Civil War. Paradoxically, his carefully reasoned theories, involving the surrender of the individual will, aroused widespread antipathy. From the book's first publication until his death he was surrounded by controversy and colloquially dubbed the ‘Monster of Malmesbury’. In 1666 his works were publicly burned at Oxford. Hobbe's beliefs became far easier for the 18th century to accept. From a modern perspective, however, it is clear that Leviathan provided a crucial interpretation of civil strife as the product of human passions and a disastrous loss of reason. Macdonald & Hargreaves 42; PMM 138; Wing H-2246.