BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 8 04(COKE, Edward) SENECA. L. Annaei Senecae Operum Alter Tomus. Lugduni, 1555. Thick octavo, contemporary French calf covers inset into and spine laid down over modern calf, custom clamshell box. $25,000 A great rarity: a book from the collection of Sir Edward Coke, one of the iconic figures in English history and law, with his signature on the title page: an early edition, of Seneca’s works in Latin, in a beautiful contemporary French binding. Sir Edward Coke “was the great Queen Elizabeth’s Attorney General and was Chief Justice under James, first Stuart King of England. The volumes that Coke wrote… remained for nearly three centuries the backlog of legal studies in England and America... Coke is English law personified. Perhaps no Englishman, unless it is Winston Churchill, has embodied so many aspects of government. From Elizabeth’s Attorney General to James’s Chief Justice is a natural transition. But from state prosecutor to wholehearted Commons man, defender of free speech and parliamentary privilege, is almost a transmutation. Coke never set foot on American soil. Yet no United States citizen can read his story without a sense of immediate recognition. As judge and leader of the Commons, Coke risked his life for the very principles we take for granted: a prisoner’s right to public trial and the writ of habeas corpus, a man’s right not to be jailed without cause shown, [etc.]” (Bowen). Coke was a great collector in his day. “A catalogue made shortly before his death in 1634 lists 1237 items… The collection was wide ranging and as well as law included theology, history and many other subjects” (David Pearson). Coke’s interest in Seneca is reflected in his writings. “Coke was trained in the humanist disciplines of logic and rhetoric.... He repeatedly drew on Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, and Tacitus throughout his Institutes in seeking to achieve the ideal balance between legal scholarship and rhetoric” (Ian King). #741 in Hassell’s Catalogue of the Library of Sir Edward Coke (Yale University Press, 1950). Text clean, binding neatly retains beautiful contemporary calf-gilt covers and spine. An excellent copy, with distinguished provenance. Sir Edward Coke’s Copy Of Seneca, Signed By Him And Beautifully Bound
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