050C Moffet, Thomas. (1553-1604) Insectorvm sive minimorum animalium theatrvm: olim ab Edoardo Wottono. Conrado Gesnero. Thomaqve Pennio inchoatum: tandem Tho. Movfeti Londinatis opera sumptibusq; maximis concinnatum, auctum, perfectum: Et ad vivum expressis iconibus supra quingentis illustratum.

London: ex Officina typographica Thom. Cotes. Et venales extant apud Guiliel. Hope, ad insigne Chirothecæ, prope regium Excambium, 1634

$6,000

Folio, 11.8 x 7.4 in. Variant of the first edition. A6, a4, B-L6 (L2 and L5 misbound), M-Z6, Aa-Dd6, Ee4. The ownership inscription of George Howell, dated November 20, 1750, appears on the front of the second free leaf. The volume contains ninety-eight pages of detailed woodcuts of insects. There are, in fact, more than five hundred individual insects illustrated in this work. This copy is bound in seventeenth-century English sheepskin, has been rebacked, and the corners have been repaired. Wormholes in the lower margin do not affect the text.

Moffett, a physician by training, was educated at Cambridge where he earned a degree from Trinity College before proceeding to Caius College. While at Caius, despite being “nearly poisoned by eating mussels,” Moffett was summarily dismissed by Master Thomas Legge, who was later charged with expelling Moffett without the consent of the fellows.

“In 1579 Moffett visited Italy and Spain; there he studied the culture of the silkworm, which he made the subject of a poem, and became an acute observer of all forms of insect life.” He also took up the study of medicine before returning to England, where he spent some time at court, meeting such notables as Tycho Brahe and Peter Severinus before settling down to a practice in London. He was well thought of, described as “an eminent ornament of the Society of Physicians, a man of the more polite and solid learning, and renowned in most branches of science.” Moffett, lauded by his peers as “the prince of entomologists,” completed, in 1590, “a valuable work on the natural history of insects.” This work was published posthumously and has been praised for “the copiousness of the species described and the character of the engravings.” (DNB)

STC 17993a; Huntington, p. 297; Nissen 2852; Horn.-Schenkl. III, 15547; Hagen I, 553.