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5 volumes, octavo (215 x 137mm), pp. I: [i]-xx, 1-306, [2 (imprint, blank)]; II: [2 (blank l.)], [8 (half-title, blank, title, imprint, contents, blank, note, blank)], 309-808, [2 (imprint, blank)]; III: [2 (blank l.)], [6 (half-title, blank, title, imprint, contents, blank)], 809-1289, [1 (imprint)], [2 (blank l.)]; IV: [2 (blank l.)], [6 (half-title, blank, title, imprint, contents, blank)], 1291-1898; V: [2 (blank l.)], [6 (half-title, blank, title, imprint, contents, blank)], 1899-2065, [1 (imprint)]. 25 half-tone plates, some with illustrations recto-and-verso, and one illustration in the text. One folding letterpress genealogical table. Original black buckram gilt, upper boards blocked with Ashmole's arms in gilt, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, lower boards blind-stamped with number '200', black-and-brown printed dustwrappers, price-clipped. (Extremities minimally bumped, slight traces of damp at head of spines, top edges slightly spotted, dustwrappers slightly creased at edges and slightly faded on spines.) A very good set. Provenance: Raymond Emil Maddison (1931-2003).
First edition. This landmark work on Elias Ashmole, the antiquary and founder of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, combines an extensive biographical introduction by C.H. Josten with 'an annotated edition of his autobiographical notes (including the previously unread cipher notes), of his correspondence, and of other relevant sources' (dustwrapper blurb). It was published to much critical acclaim in 1966 and has remained the cornerstone of Ashmole scholarship to this day: for instance, the digital edition of Ashmole's correspondence at the University of Oxford takes this work as its 'key bibliographic source' as well as the basis for the edition (Howard Hotson and Miranda Lewis, eds, Early Modern Letters Online, created 2009-2015).
The editor and author of the biographical introduction, the historian of science C.H. Josten (1912-1994), had discovered Ashmole's diary in cipher while working at the Bodleian Library in 1949. He 'was a German by birth, an Englishman by adoption, choice, and taste', and had -- following years of opposing Nazism and then being involved with the denazification process -- started working at Duke Humfrey's Library at the Bodleian Library in June 1948. 'Apart from decoding Ashmole's diaries, Josten was adept at astronomy, in the history of early chemistry (alchemy), and, pre-eminently, in early astronomical instruments', and he was therefore 'appointed Curator of the Museum of the History of Science in the old Ashmolean building in Broad Street, Oxford, in 1950 [. . .]. In the old Ashmolean, his achievements will be recalled for the great contribution which he made to the collections and as Ashmole's remembrancer' (Ian Lowe, 'Obituary: Kurt Josten', The Independent, 11 July 1994).
Charles Webster reviewed Elias Ashmole (1617-1692) in the British Journal for the History of Science, stating that this 'monumental edition of materials relating to Elias Ashmole is a fitting climax to [Josten's] earlier studies [on John Dee and Robert Fludd]. The large and intractable collection of materials relating to Ashmole at Oxford has hitherto proved too formidable for historians and biographers, who have been content to reiterate ill-digested versions of Campbell's Biographia Britannica article of 1747. Josten has amply repaired this neglect and has compiled documents relating to Ashmole into a fully annotated text [. . .], to produce a work which will be a valuable complement to E. S. de Beer's edition of John Evelyn's Diary' (BJHS 4.1 (June 1968), pp. 72-73, at p. 72).
J.B. Blake, Bibliography of the History of Medicine 1964-1969, p. 17; A. Pritchard, Alchemy: A Bibliography of English-Language Writings, 958.
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