Mini flash-mob for Spinoza's Library

Tim found an inventory of Spinoza's library and thought it would be a fun little project, so I've put up a flash-mob wiki page for it. Have fun! Feel free to post questions/problems/&c. here. This one's a little tricky given that it's a 17th-century library and most of the books are in Latin, but many of the entries have dates, so they should be fairly add-able (for the dateless ones, see the notes on the wiki page). I've added a bunch of the most typical useful sources on Spinoza's "Add books" page (and removed Amazon).

Wiki page: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Spinoza

Profile page: http://www.librarything.com/profile/BenedictusdeSpinoza

Another source, which gives some additional data on these books (starting on p. 119) and may be helpful. Take it with a grain of salt, though - he's wrong sometimes.

http://books.google.com/books?id=bYgRAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA168&ots=qXdsABM8Ou&a...

ETA from below: another version of the inventory. Useful for identifying authors and works, but they make some unjustified assumptions about editions, so if the entry doesn't actually give edition information (and there was more than one edition of the work published), use a "Precise edition unknown" note.

http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/perl/pagina_xhtml.pl?scelta=inventario&par1=bibliot... (useful for cross-checking and some edition data)

I did most of the duodecimo books, with following exceptions (if author only, in bold):

1. Klauberghs uytbreiding van Descartes.--which book?

4. Salustius.

6. Voyage en Espagne 1666.

20. Ovidius 3 vol.

22. Le Visioni Politique 1671. (this is either Le vision politique or Le visioni politiche, but neither brings up anything)

23. Curtius.

24. Virgilius.

25. Plautus 1652.

28. Justinianus

30. Euclides.

34. Phrases Virgil. et Horat.

35. Virgilius.

36. Ephemerides.

39. Tacitus.

40. Elementa Physica.

For some of those I can make most likely guesses, but I'm not sure that's good enough--thoughts?

NOTE: there are MANY typos all over the place, badly abbreviated titles etc. so identification of books is less simple than you might think.

I must go now, if I find time I'll do more.

>3 LolaWalser: - Wow, nice! I'll take a crack at the problem children and see which can be puzzled out. I'll leave another update with any I don't manage to track something down for (and/or make a dummy record for).

THe screen says I'm a member of Legacy Libraries, but I've never worked on a Flash Mob project. As I know
some Dutch and a lot of Latin, I'd like to work on this one.
I'm not sure what "doing"
a title means in this context; or what is being "guessed" at
(3rd from last paragr. of 3).
Are the ones in Bold the ones that are now considered
"cataloged"?

The ones still to be done are the unclaimed ones at http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Spinoza (see the steps there to get started ... if you have questions just ask :-)

>3 LolaWalser: - I've finished off the 12mos. Thanks for your very good start on them!

What did you do about the author-only entries? So we have a guideline...

Depends ... Some of them when they really only have one work (like Curtius) I added the title, but for others, like Virgil, I just did "Virgilius" in the title field (in brackets, which auto-touchstone here) and added the "Precise work unknown" note in Comments. You can see in Spinoza's catalog the various ways I did it, but it definitely depends on the author.

I see you (someone) edited the entry which was on the list as "obra devota la cuna". I had decided that it is most likely "....obra devota... {compuesta por David Israel Lopez} Laguna" (full title: Espejo fiel de vidas que contiene los psalmos de David en verso Obra devota, util y deleytable)

You don't agree? I thought the date and topic matched well. You can see a facsimile here, scroll a bit:

http://www.idcpublishers.com/pdf/330_titlelist.pdf

>10 LolaWalser: - That was published in 1720, after Spinoza's death. So I didn't think that could be it, and I didn't see an earlier edition. Did you find one?

Oops. Hm--there's also more than one D. Laguna, also XVII... Oh--got it. It's actually Quevedo--Obra devota, la Cuna, 12mo (sin identificar obra y edicion... possibly it's "La Cuna y la sepultura para el conocimiento propio y desengano de las cosas ajenas", one of Quevedos most publsihed etc. etc.)

How do I link those humongous Google Books links? Anyway--the title is "Spinoza y Espana" and it lists three books by Quevedo as in Spinoza's possession, some titles for learning Spanish (Castilian)--interesting commentary on Spanish books Spinoza had/chose, maybe some of that could go in comments... (For instance: "he knew to choose classics of our language: Cervantes, Gracian, Gongora, Quevedo, Saavedra Fajardo; let's mention in passing that no mystics appear, nor Calderon, nor Lope.")

Jeremy, check out the listing of Spinoza's library at this link; it seems to me far better than the one in the #1!

http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/perl/pagina_xhtml.pl?scelta=21&par1=biblioteca_spin...

ETA: Ooh, and the title links lead to descriptions of books!

>12 LolaWalser: - Good sleuthing!
>13 LolaWalser: - Ah, nifty, yes.

http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/perl/pagina_xhtml.pl?scelta=inventario&par1=bibliot... - this is the list in inventory order - taken a week or so after the other one, with some more complete entries. Definitely useful, indeed - we can now cross-reference. I'm headed to bed now but will play more with it in the a.m.

I did Quarto 1-9. I did some serious sleuthing, disagreeing with Savaas once or twice. When in doubt I wrote up my "Justification" and put it in the private comments section.

>14 jbd1:

Oh shit. I didn't take that into account yet. Are you saying it was a second catalog of it?

Jeremy, I edited the duodecimo Tacitus entry with the title from the Italian list and deleted your comment--sorry about that!

Before going further, I'll wait to see whether you want to edit the Wiki page, because the Italian list has no typos and would be a better source for entry. But, it doesn't have groupings by format, which would mean reorganising entry or risking duplications and misses.

ETA: Argh--attention--just noticed discrepancies between the Italian list as you gave it in #14 and my link (by author) in #13! The former has some entries like the Dutch list, this title, for instance: 142 22 Leti, Gregorio Le Visioni Politique. {sic} (I see you found and added the correct Italian version to the catalogue.) Does it also have typos? Sorry, no time to check all.

Anyway, the "by author" listing seems clean, but also... shorter, maybe...

I'll just wait to see how you want to go about the rest.

Heh. Yeah, let me dig in a bit and really see what's up. What I'd LIKE is just an image of the inventories, so we can see what they actually say, rather than someone's transcription of them. Let me see if I can locate that, and then we'll move forward. If I can't, we'll just have to add notes in Comments about the way the entries are worded in both inventories. The good thing is that both inventories pretty much seem to contain the same books, at least, and the actual book pages on the second inventory (i.e. http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/perl/pagina_xhtml.pl?scelta=22&opsigla=LetiVis&... seem to be mostly accurate as to how the entry actually appeared.

Will report back in a bit :-)

Abstaining for a while, in hope we get this figured out first. In the mean while, should any of the Dutch titles cause problems: I'm a native speaker (with some experience of 17th century Dutch, though I wouldn't dare to call myself expert).

Ah, I've figured it. They're not actually two different lists at all, just different versions/interpretations of the same list (and using different dates from the original inventory manuscript - one using 21 February 1677, when the inventory was taken, and the other using 2 March 1677, when the inventory was sworn to before a notary).

The Italians at http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/perl/pagina_xhtml.pl?scelta=inventario&par1=bibliot... have made certain assumptions about editions, which is some cases are justified and in others don't appear to be (i.e. "Tacitus" at Duodecimo 39). The Italian site assumes this to be a 1643 Amsterdam edition, but there is no actual evidence for this. In their introduction to the site that team notes that where the specific edition is unknown, they have chosen "a range of reasonable (by year and / or place of printing) option" (Google's translation). Instead of doing that, we use "Precise edition unknown." They've also occasionally followed the lead of Servaas (that source I link to in 2 above), who (as Tim found) is sometimes simply incorrect. Makes for a fun bit of biblio-sleuthing, though!

So, basically we're back to where we were, although the Italian list in inventory-order certainly is useful in identifying hidden authors, at least most of the time :-)

I'll go through the previously-added entries and tidy up, but folks should be able to pick sections and add again without much difficulty. If you have questions, just holler!

>18 Nicole_VanK: - Thanks! You certainly may well be called upon :-)

Here is a large PDF-file with Baruch's library details for BarkingMatt: http://philosophy.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/2009/boekenvanspinoza/Boeken_van_Sp...

Ah, good. Just what I was looking for, thanks!

>21 mercure: - Same issue as the other reconstructions, in this case, however (at least as pertains to editions). This list includes "replacement copies" purchased later, and not necessarily of the same edition. BUT, at least this gives us the images of the original manuscript. Huzzah for that!

> 21: Thanks. 17th century Dutch I can - mostly - handle, 17th century handwriting - alas - not so much. But some of it's decipherable, I'll do my best.

Hey Jeremy, I did Quartos 10-30.

If you sort by tag Quarto you'll see where one entry needs to be checked for correct format, in the Italian inventory it's described as in-8.

Also, there seems to have been a duplication of Christopher Sand's Nucleus historiae eccles., it's entered now twice, as quarto and as folio... not sure which is right (or both?)

Inventory designations are in Comments.

Ciao!

Cool, thanks!

31-40 also entered. 31 and 33 were a pain to enter and LT backstabbed (or better backslashed) me when I finally found a source for one of them.

Nicely done, all. I'll write up a short profile note in a bit.

>25 LolaWalser: - Sand's book is entered twice in the original inventory, so he may have had two copies (seems to have had a few dupes).

#28

Yes--but is it likely that one is a quarto and the other a folio, if they are from the same year? Anyway, just so you know...

>28 jbd1: - We don't have evidence that they're from the same year. The quarto entry indicates a year (1676) but the octavo entry does not, so we don't know the edition of the octavo; it could have been any of several.