preference for buying only works in English ( or Icelandic ). Thordarson also asked Hill to order from Quaritch two slim titles that built , if in polemical fashion , on Gilbert ’ s work : Mark Ridley ’ s Short treatise of magnetical bodies and motions ( 1613 ) and William Barlow ’ s Breife [ sic ] discovery of the idle animadversions of Marke Ridley ( 1618 ). Benjamin Wilson ’ s An essay towards an explication of the phaenomena of electricity , deduced from the aether of Sir Isaac Newton ( 1746 ) also came from Quaritch ; Tiberius Cavallo ’ s An essay on the theory and practice of medical electricity ( 1780 ), ordered by Hill from Robinson , explored electrotherapeutics . L ’ Art Ancien supplied George Adams ’ late eighteenth-century Essay on electricity , whose readers could also avail themselves of “ scientific instruments , made and sold by George Adams .”
I have been able to pair our own collection records with bills in the Thordarson archives at the Historical Society and with Maggs Bros . catalogues in Special Collections 5 to track Thordarson ’ s success in adding to his holdings of natural philosophy . These sources show that Thordarson snagged from a two-part Maggs catalogue ninety-one titles on a wide range of topics , including Scandinavian travel , fishing , road technology , increase and preservation of timber , almanacs , and insects , along with books on astrology and astronomy with distinguished provenance and manuscript annotations . The total bill , more than $ 1,900 , also included numerous works on natural philosophy : path-breaking titles as well as textbooks ; publications from the early years of the Royal Society , dedicated as it was to “ the improving of natural knowledge ”; works by eighteenth-century heirs to Newton ’ s legacy ; early translations of signal works in other languages ; and both popular and research books by professors of natural philosophy in great British universities in the nineteenth century .
Maggs ’ stock in this area was impressive , and English books from the fifteenth through eighteenth century were right up Thordarson ’ s alley . Mathematical discourses concerning two new sciences relating to mechanicks and local motion ( 1730 ), as “ done into English ” nearly a century after it first appeared , brought Galileo ’ s writings to Thordarson ’ s library . The copy of Hooke ’ s Micrographia , one of the most expensive books Thordarson acquired from Maggs in 1926 , was described as “ A Magnificent Copy bound by Dusseuil in full crimson morocco , gilt backs , g . e . … From the library of Louis Henri , Comte de Loménie , with his Arms in gold on sides ” ( it sold for $ 74 — those were the days !). Maclaurin ’ s Account of Sir I . Newton ’ s philosophical discoveries ( 1748 ) complemented the edition of Newton ’ s Opticks ( 1704 ) that Thordarson acquired , also via Hill in 1926 , from the dealer Featherstone .
In the New experiments physico-mechanical , touching the spring of the air , and its effects ( 1662 ), also acquired from Maggs , Robert Boyle exploited a “ new pneumatical engine ” ( the air pump ), “ punctually relating what [ he ] carefully observ ’ d .” George Sinclair ’ s prolix Natural philosophy improven [ sic ] by new experiments ( 1683 ), likewise from Maggs , extolled the merits of the “ mercurial weather-glass ” ( barometer ), hygroscope , and diving bell . Thordarson also acquired from the Maggs catalogue a late eighteenth-century title by self-styled “ professor of animal magnetism ” John Bell , who showed “ how to magnetise and cure different diseases , to produce crises , as well as somnambulism , or sleep-walking ... to make apparatus and other accessaries [ sic ] to produce magnetical facts : also to magnetise rivers , rooms , trees , and other bodies .”
Those titles deemed rare when the University of Wisconsin bought Thordarson ’ s library from his heirs 6 have ended up in Special Collections . Many have since found productive use in teaching and research projects from history of science to literature , from art history to studies of material culture . Thordarson titles with intriguing subjects and striking illustrations will also figure , alongside his natural history books and works
74 Martha Glowacki ’ s Natural History , Observations and Reflections