Hobbes (Thomas) Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme & Power of a Common-Wealth, first edition, first issue, printed title with 'head' ornament, additional engraved pictorial title with paper restorations to upper corner (not affecting image) and light minor staining, folding letter press table with small tear to lower margin, initial 4 ff., including title, and a few other ff. with small marginal tears, occasional spotting and staining, worm hole from 2R2 onwards, very slightly affecting text, contemporary ink ownership inscription to title, endpapers renewed, contemporary calf, re-backed, covers and extremities rubbed, [Pforzheimer 491; PMM 138; Wing H2246], folio, for Andrew Crooke, 1651.

⁂ Hobbes is now widely regarded as among the greats of political philosophy and Leviathan, his most famous work, has been described as rivalling the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau and Kant in terms of political significance due to its early and influential development of the 'social contract theory' (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy). His argument, drawn from experiencing the English Civil War, was that a contract between society and an absolute power was necessary to prevent a degradation into anarchy or the 'war of all against all'. 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.