Books

Folio (202 x 294 mm). (6), 394 pp. With additional engraved title-page by Abraham Bosse and folding letterpress table. Later dark red calf-backed boards, spine in compartments and with later black leather label and black rules done to style. First edition, first issue ("head edition"). "This book produced a fermentation in English thought not surpassed until the advent of Darwinism" (Pforzheimer). Hobbes's treatise was an attempt to reconcile his earlier royalist stance with the prevailing political situation in England during the Commonwealth. "It summarized Hobbes's general argument about the rational basis of political authority, pointing out that there was a reciprocal relationship between protection and obedience: Hobbes's point was that since the king (now Charles II) could not protect people in England, they were impelled by the dictates of self-preservation to transfer their obedience to the power that now ruled there" (Oxford DNB). The Roman Catholic Church placed the work on the Index of Prohibited Books for its idea that the sovereign should also act as head of the state's religion. - Some spotting or foxing throughout with occasional soiling; lightly browned. Engraved title trimmed to border and neatly remargined. Leaves L2-3 supplied from another copy (remargined and neatly bound in); B4 shows a small hole in the lower margin, affecting a letter of catchword verso; Bb2 has a repair to the upper blank corner; inner gutters of Bb3-4 reinforced; Yy3-Aaa4 show a very minor, mostly marginal worm trace. Binding repaired, boards stained and rubbed. From the personal library of the British philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny (b. 1931), who wrote on Hobbes in his "A New History of Western Philosophy" (2010), with his bookplate to front pastedown. - Macdonald/Hargreaves 42. Pforzheimer Library, English Literature (1940) 491. PMM 138. Wing H2246.

Leviathan is a book written by Thomas Hobbes which concerns the structure of society and legitimate government, and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory.