BRIGHT, Timothie (1550-1615)

Los 162
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
Classic
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
VeranstaltungsortVereinigtes Königreich, London
Aufgeldsee on Website%
ID 1514520
Los 162 | BRIGHT, Timothie (1550-1615)
Schätzwert
£ 4 000 – 6 000
BRIGHT, Timothie (1550-1615)
Hygieina, id est de sanitate tuenda medicinae pars prima [bound with:] Medicinae therapeuticae pars: de dyscrasia corporis humani. London: H. Middleton for T. M[an], [1582-1583].
Rare first editions of both parts of Bright’s second book: no copies of either part have appeared at auction, according to RareBookHub.

Together forming a treatise on ‘the preservation and the restoration of health’ (Carlton), both parts are dedicated to Lord Burghley as Chancellor of Cambridge University, where Bright studied and lectured. 'They reflect very well the art of medicine as practised at that time, and they have the merit of brevity. They certainly brought their author some degree of fame in the medical world, for they were reprinted in Frankfurt in 1588/9 and yet again in 1598; they were even thought worth reprinting in Mainz in 1647’ (Keynes). The present copy contains the uncancelled leaf A6, in which the author’s name remains uncorrected.

Born and educated at Cambridge, Bright secured through the help of his powerful patron Sir Francis Walsingham the post of chief physician of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, in 1585. However, it is said that he ‘shirked his medical offices at St Bartholomew's in favour of authorship, shorthand, and cryptography’ (Oxford DNB), publishing the influential Treatise of melancholy (1586, see lot 163), an ‘early essay in psycho-therapy’ which ‘contributed substantially to Burton’s famous work’ (Dickens), and securing his legacy as ‘the father of modern shorthand’ through his famous work Characterie: an Arte of Shorte, Swifte, and Secrete Writing (1588). His abridgement of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs appeared in 1589. Dickens, A. G. ‘The Writers of Tudor Yorkshire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1963); ESTC S113237 and S112805; Carlton, William J. Timothe Bright, doctor of phisicke (1911); Keynes, Bright, 4 and 6.

2 parts in one volume, octavo (144 x 93m). Printer’s woodcut device on both titles [McKerrow 202γ], woodcut headpieces, initials (textblock split in first and last quires with a few leaves tipped in as a result, a couple of minor marginal repairs, occasional faint browning, some headlines trimmed). Early 17th-century calf, sides with gilt-ruled borders (rebacked and recornered). Provenance: later ink biographical note about the author on first blank – Royal Society of Medicine (ink stamp on title [Medical and Chirurgical Society]).
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