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