Binding & Physical Attributes
The UBC Rare Books & Special Collections 1634 folio edition of Paré has a contemporary calf-skin binding with a blind tooled border (image 1) on the outside cover and a gold tooled border (image 4) on the inside cover. The binding is worn, and in the pictures above you can see that the spine is cracked (image 3) and the leather covering has chipped away from the boards, showing lettering beneath (image 4). Bookboards in this period were pasteboard, which was made by pasting together layers of paper - usually scrapped printed sheets and low quality paper, explaining the presence of text. The spine has five raised bands and originally featured the title, the year and location of printing, and four decorations in gold tooling (images 2& 3), though they are now difficult to make out. The endpapers are plain brown.
Unique Features of UBC's Copy
- The original title page is missing, and has been replaced by a facsimile dated 1849 and initialed by D.H. The preliminary leaf "To the Reader" is also missing.
- There are three bookplates, which are discussed in the section on provenance and acquisition. One of the previous owners, Dr. Chauncey Leake, who sold the book to UBC along with the rest of his rare books collection, has left his signature opposite his bookplate, and written an inscription on the back endpaper. The typewritten document included in the book can also be traced to Dr. Leake, as it comes from the 1955 Conference on Diseases in Nature Transmitted to Man at the University of Texas Medical Branch, and Dr. Leake was Vice President of that institution at the time.
- The corner of pg. 41 is not cut to the same size as the rest of the book block, and has a folded tag of paper.
- The book contains two instances of marginal notation: several letters written on the bottom of pg. 840, and the words "monsterous (?) tale" written next to an account of a young nobleman's fits on pg. 990. The left edge of the writing has been cut off, suggesting that the pages were trimmed after it was added.
- Pages 995-1008 are torn at the bottom.
- Letters have been cut out of the text of book headings on two pages. On pg. 757 the D is missing from AND and on pg. 1121 both the first D in DEAD and the entirety of the word THE are missing.
- The final page of the index has been damaged and repaired.
- It also has several defects common to all 1634 editions: the page numbers jump from 487 to 553 and the 27th book, "Of distillations", is mislabelled as the 28th.