Lot 74: BERKELEY, GEORGE.

BERKELEY, GEORGE. THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONUS. G. JAMES FOR HENRY CLEMENTS, 1713 8vo (197 x 112mm.), first edition, contemporary speckled calf gilt, some passages underlined in a near contemporary hand, a few short tears, tears to B6, C8, D8, F8 affecting a few words, minor worming to margin at end, joints partially cracked, wear to edges of binding rare. Many contemporary readers had found Berkeley's classic exposition of his immaterialist doctrine in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) to be strange and unpalatable, so the philosopher recast his thinking in more popular form as a series of dialogues, to elaborate on his notions and "to place them in a new light".

William L. Leyborne, armorial bookplate