Important Wittgensteinian archive
The professional archive of the American logician and philosopher Alice Ambrose Lazerowitz (1906-2001), including extensive manuscripts by Ambrose, and autograph material by Wittgenstein, G.E. Moore, R.B. Braithwaite and Rush Rees, and many others.
Macclesfield Library dedication copy
Whitelock Bulstrode: Essays upon the Following Subjects. Viz. 1. Of Generosity. 2. Of the New Man. 3. Of the Government of the Eye … 18. A Letter… touching the Equivocal Generation of Plants and Insects …19. Of Reading the Holy Scriptures, &c. 20. Of Persons running in Debt, and dying without Payment. London: printed for A. Bettesworth, and J. Clarke, 1724.
John Locke – Portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller
Oil on canvas, unsigned, 75 x 62 cm, in contemporary gilt frame, painting lettered ‘Mr. Lock / OB; 1704; ÆT; 72’, paper label on the back with name Lt.-Col. J. Dundas [James Colin Dundas, d.1966].
Michael Dummett – a substantial part of his archives and working library
The archive includes papers and essays (some unpublished), correspondence, and many hundreds of books and offprints in logic and philosophy, some with presentation inscriptions, others with annotations by Dummett. The material ranges from manuscripts and first drafts through to corrected page proofs and published pieces. Besides the seminal work in logic and philosophy that made him famous, Dummett’s other interests – the Catholic Church, immigration and refugees, electoral reform, and the history of Tarot cards – are well represented here. The archive is unresearched, and contains much interesting academic and biographical material for future scholarship.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – the proto-Tractatus, 1921
‘Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung’ in Annalen der Naturphilosophie XIV, 3/4. Leipzig: Verlag Unesma, 1921.
8vo, [185]-308, [4] pp., original orange printed wrappers with woodcut illustration, slight darkening towards edges in two places, minor chipping at fore edge and foot of spine, short tear at top of front hinge, pages uniformly age-toned, a fine a copy, unopened, housed in a protective cloth slipcase.
Alan Turing – ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, 1950
The complete issue of Mind. A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy, 1950, original printed wrappers, nicked at edges as always (because slightly oversized), shadow around spine where sellotape was once applied, though underlying spine still sound, internally fresh and unmarked, a very good copy, housed in a protective cloth box.
Immanuel Kant – interleaved copy with a student’s sketch
8vo, xxiv, 232 pp. with the errata leaf, contemporary marbled boards very rubbed and worn at corners, spine and label renewed, title-page with taped repairs to edge and inscription ‘ex Bibliotheca Wilmus[?]’, the first 12 pages with underlinings in early ink, interleaved, with contemporary annotations in a rather hasty German cursive on 43 of the blank pages, and a humorous sketch on the rear pastedown of ‘Dr. Imm. Kant en miniature’ with the word ‘Logik’ emerging from his mouth, an interesting copy.
John Locke – An Essay concerning Humane Understanding, 1690
Folio [322 x 198 mm], [xii], 362, [22] pp., contemporary calf panelled in blind, some surface blemishes, spine nicked at head, front endpapers with 4 full pages of contemporary annotations in Latin (continued on rear endpapers, where also a few other early notes), title-page with ownership inscription in top margin, C2 and Bb with marginal tears (no text loss), a two-word annotation on p.161, light marginal dampstains, occasionally straying into the text and somewhat heavier on four leaves Kk-Kk4, isolated spots, a very good copy in an unrestored contemporary binding.
Noam Chomsky – Syntactic Structures. Janua Linguarum, Nr. IV. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1957
Chomsky’s first book, published only two years after he got his PhD. Hugely important in 20th-century linguistics, it contains the celebrated example of an utterance that is semantically meaningless while being syntactically correct – “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”(p. 15).