Hobbes (Thomas) Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme & Power of a Common-Wealth, first edition, first issue with printed title with 'head' ornament and errata uncorrected, additional engraved pictorial title by Abraham Bosse, folding letter press table, occasional foxing or light browning, rust-hole to H2 with loss to 2 or 3 letters of text, contemporary calf, rebacked and recornered, covers rubbed and with surface wear and cracking, [Pforzheimer 491; PMM 138; Wing H2246], folio, for Andrew Crooke, 1651.

⁂ Hobbes' most celebrated work and a landmark in political philosophy.

In Leviathan Hobbes espoused the social contract theory, arguing for a strong, united government to protect society against the brute state of nature into which it might otherwise fall. The iconography of the frontispiece, created after detailed consultation with Hobbes by Parisian etcher Abraham Bosse, reflects many of the book's fundamental concepts; the gigantesque sovereign-king is composed of over 300 tiny individuals, the contractual co-signers, who face away from the viewer towards their ruler, rendering him more powerful by their consent and the double columns beneath, whose panels represent the two sources of sovereign authority, ecclesiastical and temporal.