Lot 4534: Hiärne, Urban (1641-1724). , Orthographia Svecana eller den retta swenska bookstafveringen stelt i ett samtal emellan Neophilum och Eustathium. [Stockholm, c. 1716]

4to (219 x 170mm.), illustration : woodcut initial, typographic headpiece, binding : contemporary half calf, first leaf stained, light spotting, a few tiny tears

Hiärne was primarily a pioneering geologist (the mineral Hiärnate was named after him) and a distinguished physician, but he was also a literary man: he wrote the drama Rosimunda, a short novel Stratonice and a large corpus of poetry. He was created F.R.S. at a very young age and resisted the great Swedish witch-craze that raged throughout his native land between 1668 and 1677. A facsimile of Orthographia Svecana was produced as part of Urban Hiärne and Cartesian phonetics (Lund, 1997).