Congratulations to Harvard’s Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, for winning this year’s National Book Award for non-fiction for his book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. The Swerve concerns the rediscovery of the philosophical poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), written in the first century BC by Titus Lucretius Carus, but lost to scholarship until a manuscript text was uncovered in 1417. Houghton holds more than 75 different editions of this work; let’s take this opportunity to look at some of the most interesting ones.
The first printed edition (1473) is extremely rare: only four copies are known, none in the U.S. We do however hold copies of the three other editions printed before 1501. This copy of the 1495 edition has been annotated by the scholar and editor Hieronymus Avancius in preparing the text for his 1500 Aldine edition of the work (below).
Greenblatt discusses the copy annotated by Michel de Montaigne (held at Cambridge University) and we own a copy of the 1563 edition Montaigne read.
Some of our copies are important for who owned them, such as this copy which belonged to the poet and playwright Ben Jonson. Sadly, he or a later owner spilled highly corrosive iron gall ink on the book, leaving it badly damaged in several places.
Another copy bears the signature of Alexander Pope. The illustration at the top of this post is from the same 1713 edition.
Other editions are notable for their beauty, such as that printed by John Baskerville in 1772. The clarity and elegance of his books and typefaces continues to inspire designers today.
This calligraphed Italian translation from 1669 must surely be one of the most beautiful forms the text has ever taken.
From now until the end of the year, the 1495 and 1500 editions, as well as the Ben Jonson copy (thanks to some very deft work by our conservation team) will be on display in Houghton’s ground floor Chaucer Case.