Lot 85: DONNE, JOHN.

BIAQANATOS. A Declaration of that Paradoxe, or Thesis, that Self-homicide is not so naturally Sin, that it may never be otherwise. Wherein the Nature, and the extent of all those Lawes, which seeme to be violated by this Act, are diligently surveyed. For Humphrey Moseley, 1648

Condition Note:

first edition, second issue, title in red and black within typographic border, woodcut headpieces and initials, seventeenth-century mottled calf, marbled endpapers, lacking *1 and *2 ("Authors cited in this Booke"), without preliminary blank, title strengthened at inner margin, browning to centre of E gathering (not obscuring text), light dampstaining to corners throughout (heavier at last few gatherings), occasional spotting, some ink-stains, binding somewhat worn, rebacked

[together with:] BIAQANATOS... Printed in the Year, 1700, 8vo, second edition, contemporary blind-panelled calf, fragment of top outer corner of title torn away (affecting eight letters), occasional spotting, endpapers browned, extremities worn, joints weak, upper cover almost detached

[together with:] Synod of Dort. Iudicium synodi nationalis reformatarum ecclesiarum belgicarum, habitae Dordrechti, anno 1618 & 1619... de quinque doctrinae capitibus in ecclesiis belgicis controversis. Promulgatum VI Maii MDCXIX. Frankfurt: Hulsius, 1619, 12mo, woodcut initials and headpieces, later wrapper, in modern folder

together 3 volumes

[1648 edition:] Wing D1859; Keynes 48; cf. Pforzheimer 292; [1700 edition:] Wing D1860; Keynes 49

[1648 edition:] Alexander Henderson, bookplate; Charles W.G. Howard, bookplate ("The Gift of The Rt. Hon. Sir David Dundas of Ochtertyre, 1877"); I.A. Shapiro, autograph notes on front endpapers ("First published without date [1644]"); [1700 edition:] Geo[rge] Riches, ownership inscription; I. A. Shapiro, ownership inscription dated February 1927; [Dort] Fritz Mauthner, bookplate; I.A. Shapiro, loosely inserted notes

Biathanatos was Donne's earliest known major prose work, and certainly his longest work, written c.1608, and devoted to a lengthy historical study of suicide. Its controversial subject matter, not least his intimation that, as Jorge Luis Borges later put it, God had created the world in order to construct his own scaffold, made Donne hesitant to publish it. Contrary to his wishes, his manuscript was eventually printed, long after his death, by his son, John Donne the younger.

As I.A. Shapiro notes in the third item, when Donne was at the Hague with Viscount Doncaster in December 1619, he was given one of the gold medals struck to commemorate the Synod of Dort, which he bequeathed to Henry King.