Phædon: or, A Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul. Translated from the original Greek by Madam Dacier. With notes and emendations. To which is prefixed the Life of the Author, by Fénélon, Archbishop of Cambray. First American, from the Rare London Edition.
New-York: W. Gowan, 1833. First edition of the first printing of Plato in the United States. This has the later state of the spine label (with the one-dollar value as opposed to seventy-five cents). Spine label chipped and boards somewhat rubbed at extremities. Light foxing. Contemporary ink signature to upper margin of title-page. A very good, untrimmed copy. Contemporary quarter brown cloth over brown paper boards, printed paper spine label, with the price of one dollar. Twelvemo. 209, [2, ads] pp. Item #17095
Anne Lefevre (1654 – 1720) and her husband Andre Dacier (1651 – 1722) were learned Hellenists and Latinist scholars who took the side of the Ancients in the quarrel with the modernists that was raging at the time. They did much of their work together with Anne often being the translator and Andre the commentator. They also translated Horace, Aristotle, Sophocles, Epictetus, Hippocrates, and Plutarch. Lefevre is recognized as one of the most accomplished French scholars of the seventeenth century. She translated the Plutus and Clouds of Aristophanes, Plutarch's Lives, the whole of Anacreon and Sappho, and her celebrated translations of Marcus Aurelius and Homer. Dacier was a member of the French Academy, editor of the Delphin series of classics, and for a time the keeper of the library at the Louvre. Lefevre and Dacier met after Lefevre published an acclaimed translation of Callimachus and she was invited to assist in the preparation of the Delphin classics. Lefevre also corresponded with Queen Christina of Sweden and other important figures.
Atherton, Margaret. Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period (1994).
Price: $600.00