1905 The System of the Stars

Description

Early Edition, Folding Maps, Illustrated, Original Binding, Publishers' Original Binding, Uncommon

The second edition of the work, with the work having been first published in 1890.

Magnificently illustrated with twenty monochrome plates including a monochrome folding photographic chart of the Pleiades by MM. Paul and Prosper Henry containing 2326 Stars as the frontispiece, in addition to thirty-eight monochrome vignettes. Collated complete. This work was one of the first publications to be illustrated with astrophotography, and contains five astronomical photographs of nebulae.

This copy with a bookplate that reads; "O libri, soli liberales et liberi, commodissimi magistri, qui omni petenti tribuitis, qui omnes manumittitis vobis sedulo servientes, Vos Arca Noe! Vos vera Scala Jacob!" ("O books, only liberal and free, most convenient teachers, who give to all who ask, who hand over all to serve you diligently, you Noah's Ark! You are the real Jacob's Ladder!") to the front pastedown, in addition to the bookplate of Otto Vernon Darbishire to the recto of the front free endpaper. Otto Vernon Darbishire (1870-1934) was a British botanist who specialised in the study of marine algae and lichens. 

An uncommon work.

Agnes Mary Clarke was an Irish astronomer and writer who, with her brother in 1890, was a founding member of the British Astronomical Association. She was also elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1903, a rank which had previously only been attained by three other women: Caroline Herschel, Mary Somerville, and Anne Sheepshanks. The System of the Stars is a fascinating work which was published with the intention of educating the general public on progress made in the field of sidereal astronomy during the nineteenth century. It also argues that the natural beauty and symmetry of the universe revealed through astrophotography points to the existence of a creator.