Books

Miniature, small hardback, 3.5 x 1.75 inches (9 x 4.5 cm). Full calf leather fine binding, diced boards with decorative gilt border, gilt ?Lion Rampant? to front. Gilt lettering and decorations to spine. Marbled endpapers, brown speckled page edges. In very good condition. A couple of minor handling marks to boards, some minor fading, some minor rubbing to corners. Dated on spine has been mis-stamped 1733 instead of 1633. Neat inscription to front endpaper. Main title page has been professionally backed / strengthened. A couple of minor handling marks, else pages all very clean and tight throughout. A very good clean and tight copy of a very early printing. 256pp. Illustrated with a B&W engraved title page. A philosophical work by Boethius, written around the year 524AD. It has been described as the single most important and influential work in the West on Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, written during a one-year imprisonment Boethius served while awaiting trial ? and eventual execution ? for the crime of treason under the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great. The text reflects on how evil can exist in a world governed by God (the problem of theodicy), and how happiness can be attainable amidst fickle fortune, while also considering the nature of happiness and God.