The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh. Written by the Right Honourable, Francis Bacon. London: Printed by W. Stansby for Matthew Lownes, and William Barret. 1622.
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First edition first issue with "Souldiers" to pp.3 line 12. A defective copy but charming for its originality. This first edition is very scarce in a contemporary binding as with this copy which retains its original full calf binding.
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Size: 194 x 300 mm (approx.)
Condition:
[(1), t.p., pp.1-234, pp.241-246]
Full brown calf binding, worn, rubbed and scuffed, with small loss to the backstrip and corners. Shelf and edge wear. Small pieces of the leather peeling. Lacking tooled label. Front board detached. Rear board attached joint and hinge cracked, thus very fragile. Red page edges dulled. No attached bookplates. Pencil and an ink ownership inscriptions to the front pastedown and front blank. Title page has been mounted to a later sheet and has some small loss at edges, but is the original title. Ink inscription to the head of the title page. Title page toned with some marks, detached. Small loss to the bottom of the front blank. Rear blank lacking. Text block lightly toned with some damp staining and wormholing to most leaves, and with occasional foxing. Marginalia to pp.1, 51, 64, 65, 69, 70, 117, and 194, very minor in ink, not affecting any text, mostly lines, three of which are written text. Mark to pp.104. Word "also" crossed out in ink but legible on pp.130. The 6 in the pagination is lacking so there was a pencil 6 written in the gap on pp.169. Small edge tear with loss to pp.173/174, not affecting any text. Pp.209 was not printed properly, appearing to have been printed twice due to improper ink quantity, so the text has what is best described as a 3-D effect, as the text was printed the second time slightly to the side. Ink stain on pp.222 on the word "with". Pp.241-246 detached and with edge tears and creasing. Lacking 8 preliminary pages (the frontispiece and dedication) and pp.247-248.
[OCLC 4453305].
