A first edition of the first book by Italian pioneer scientist Galileo Galilei has sold at auction for £1.1 million (around $1.5 million) at a London auction.
Christie’s sold the book, Dialogo in perpuositio de la stella nuova, in their Valuable Books and Manuscripts sale on July 9.
It went into the sale with an estimate of £500,000 to £800,000.
Christie’s described the book, which discussed the appearance of Kepler’s Supernova in 1604, as “exceptionally rare” saying just 7 other complete copies are currently known. “No other copy is recorded on the market in over a century; no other copy is known in private hands,” they said.
In the volume, Galileo uses the device of an imagined conversation between two peasants who discuss the new feature in the sky.
It was published under the pseudonym Cecco di Ronchitti in 1604.
It’s a revolutionary text, challenging the belief that the skies were fixed and unchanging.
But, despite the mechanisms he used to hide his identity and moderate his criticism of the accepted (and enforced) view of the world, Galileo was already walking on dangerous ground. A second version of the book removed the idea that the world revolved.
Eleven copies of the book have been found but four are incomplete.
This copy is in good condition, with some damage recorded: “some deckle edges preserved (faint crease to corner of title, small chip to corner of blank margin in B1, a few minor stains [heavier to D1] and light finger-soiling).” It was held in a private European collection.
Galileo didn’t claim ownership of this work and probably co-wrote it with a young monk, his student. Later in life, he was to be open enough about his ideas to face trial for them. He was kept under house arrest from 1632.
In 2016, a first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica was auctioned for £3 million ($3.7 million) in New York. It is the most valuable scientific book ever sold.
