[RECORDE, ROBERT (1510?-1558)]. The Grounde of Artes; Teaching the Work and Practise of Arithmetike... [London?][circa 1580's].
REPRINT. Leather-bound; hardcover; small octavo (15.5 x 10 x 3.5 cm); pp. 35-512. English text edited and enlarged by John Mellis and John Dee. Printed in Black Letter, with some Italic and Roman. Historiated and grotesque woodcut initials, woodcut tailpieces, numerous woodcut diagrams and tables in the text, with the divisional title page (2C3): "The third part or Addition to this Booke entreateth of briefe Rules ... Set forth by John Mellis schoolemaster". Bound in later full calf. Condition: FAIR. An incomplete copy; lacking all before C2 and all after 2I8, plus O7, Q1-2, and V8. Binding secure, the extremities somewhat rubbed. Interior toned, stained and thumbed, some corners and fore-margins with losses, various old marginal annotations throughout, with Roger Conway's 18th century scribbling to the endpapers, some older names appearing in the margins. A flawed copy of an extremely rare title.
Notes: Very rare early edition of this most important mathematical work of the sixteenth century in England, edited and augmented after the author’s death by John Dee and John Mellis. The publication details of this particular copy are difficult to ascertain as the title-page and colophon are absent. "The third part" was added in 1582, so we can assume it was published shortly after this date. It was the standard arithmetic textbook of the period, passing through numerous editions until the late 1600s. Dee’s contributions were of a practical nature, being sections on foreign exchange and on foreign weights and measures. Robert Recorde’s Arithmetic: or, The Ground of Arts was one of the first printed English textbooks on arithmetic and the most popular of its time. The first edition of 1543 was preceded only by two other anonymous mathematical texts in 1537 and 1539.
