Bacon’s Essayes, Enlarged
BACON, Francis The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall London: John Haviland for Hanna Barret, and Richard Whitaker. 1625.
4to. Twentieth-century crushed red morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe (front turn-in signed in gilt), ruled in gilt, spine lettered directly in gilt and gilt-ruled in compartments, raised bands, edges gilt, turn-ins richly gilt; pp. [9], [1 (blank)], 340; bound without blank leaf A1; A2–A4 a2 B-Z4 2A–2V4 2X2; hinges cracked but holding firm, slight offsetting to endpapers; sporadic light spotting (heavier to quires and 2K–2L), uniform light toning, small rust-mark to ff. O4–P2 with resultant hole to P2 touching two characters; else a handsome copy.
Handsome first issue of the first complete edition of Bacon’s Essayes, enlarged ‘both in Number, and Weight […] So that they are indeed a New Worke’, the last edition of the work to appear in his lifetime.
First published in 1597 as a modest octavo collection of ten texts, Bacon’s Essayes was successively enlarged and revised over nearly three decades. The present 1625 edition, the twelfth overall, is the first to contain the full complement of fifty-eight essays, and represents the definitive form of one of the great monuments of English prose. This is the first issue, with ‘newly enlarged’ on the title-page and Whitaker’s name in the imprint.
In addition to nineteen new essays, this edition presents a completely revised version of the whole collection. Earlier essays were carefully reworked: phrasing was refined, illustrative material drawn from his reading introduced, and arguments expanded by the addition of sentences or whole sections. Several pieces were entirely recast in a more formal and structured manner, while others retain, or deliberately recover, the spare and aphoristic character of the earliest essays. The work thus displays a deliberate variety of form, reflecting both the evolution of Bacon’s thought and his sustained experimentation with the genre.
Across its successive versions, the Essayes reveal an increasing preoccupation with civil life and public affairs, shaped by changing political circumstances as well as by Bacon’s own career as lawyer, courtier, statesman, philosopher, and moralist. Several of the new essays address matters of immediate relevance to the reign of James I, including economic policy in ‘Of Usury’ and colonial enterprise in ‘Of Plantations’, while ‘Of Revenge’ reflects contemporary concern with duelling. Elsewhere, existing essays are enlarged in ways that sharpen their political application: ‘Of the true Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates’ expands its consideration of military strength; ‘Of Nobility’ develops its treatment of the relationship between aristocracy and crown; and ‘Of Empire’ gains a substantial new section examining the prince’s dealings with the various estates of the realm, and the dangers attendant upon a failure of prudent governance.
Bacon himself took a close interest in the production of the volume, intervening in the printing process to make stop-press corrections. The 1625 edition ‘is the text most commonly reprinted today. For this reason [it] ranks in importance with the first of 1597’ (Pforzheimer).
Hanna Barret was seemingly the widow of William Barret; she ‘published several works – notably the productions of Montaigne, Bishop Hall, Sandys, and Bacon – between the years 1608 and 1624. Hanna Barret either retired from business or died in 1625, for we do not after that date meet with any examples of her publications’ (Shakesperiana V (1888), p. 479).
Provenance: Thomas Burdett Money-Coutts, 7th Baron Latymer (1901–1987), his sale (Sotheby’s, 15 December 1988, lot 1), with loosely inserted catalogue cutting.
ESTC S124226; Gibson 13; for the second issue, see Pforzheimer 30 and Gibson 14.
SKU: 2124917