(London: Adam Islip, 1601).

RARE FIRST EDITION OF PHILEMON HOLLAND'S GREAT TRANSLATION. The first full English translation of this important book. First published in Venice in 1469, “The ‘Natural History” of Pliny the Elder is more than a natural history: it is an encyclopaedia of all the knowledge of the ancient world. ...He was a compiler rather than an original thinker, and the importance of this book depends more on his exhaustive reading (he quotes over four hundred authorities, Greek and Latin) than on his original work. All the spare time allowed him by a busy administrative career was devoted to reading; he began long before daybreak, his nephew the younger Pliny recorded, and grudged every minute not spent in study; no book was so bad, he used to say, as not to contain something of value. When he died the 'Natural History' (the sole extant work out of one hundred and two volumes from his pen) was still incomplete. It comprises thirty-seven books dealing with mathematics and physics, geography and astronomy, medicine and zoology, anthropology and physiology, philosophy and history, agriculture and mineralogy, the arts and letters. He is scrupulous in his acknowledgment of his sources (you must, he wrote, with honest humility, declare those from whom you have profited), and the whole of the first book is devoted to the tables of contents and authorities which bear witness to his method.
The Historia soon became a standard book of reference: abstracts and abridgments appeared by the third century. Bede owned a copy, Alcuin sent the early books to Charlemagne, and Dicuil, the Irish geographer, quotes him in the ninth century. It was the basis of Isidorets Etymologiae and such medieval encyclopedias as the Speculum Majus of Vincent of Beauvais and the Catholicon of Balbus. One of the earliest books to be printed at Venice, the center from which so much of classical literature was first dispensed, it was later translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1601, and twice reprinted (a notable achievement for so vast a text). .
More recently, scholars as various as Humboldt and Grimm have praised and acknowledged their debt to it. Over and over again it will be found that the source of some ancient piece of knowledge is Pliny. (PMM)
The standard of reference for scholars since the 15th century, Holland’s translation made it available to the English speaking world for the first time. Item #31532

2 volumes bound in one. First Edition in English. First Issue with the Original Title-Page and Adam Islip as Printer. With handsome engraved title-pages to each volume. Folio, contemporary full calf, sometime rebacked, the spine panel with raised bands, one compartment lettered in gilt, the original covers refurbished with new leather along the edges as required, portions of the original clasps are still present, end-leaves replaced. Initial blank, Title,preface & table of contents 60 pp., 614, 42 index; [10, Second Title, To the Reader, Explanation of Words], 632, index, errata, final blank. Complete. A handsome and pleasing copy of this rare first edition, the endleaves renewed and the original binding refurbished at the edges and at the back, the first few leaves and the last few with some aging or toning and rubbing or time-wear to the edges, the textblock quite clean throughout, unpressed, sturdy and quite fresh, the binding with some general restoration as noted.