8vo. [4], 193pp, [3]. With two terminal pages of publisher's advertisements. Without errata slip. Contemporary blind-ruled speckled calf, recently rebacked and recornered. Later armorial bookplate of Seth Ward to FEP, near contemporary inked initials to head of title-page, occasional pencilled highlighting, light spotting, minute worm-holes to margins.

The first edition of Walter Pope's (c.1630-1714) biography of Seth Ward (1617-1689), English astronomer, philosopher and Anglican bishop, and the first Savilian professor to both subscribe to and teach Copernican theory whilst at Oxford. Pope, a long-standing confidant, is remarkably generous in his praise for Ward's accomplishments - to the extent that he claims, likely falsely, that his friend was an autodidact in the field of mathematics.

Throughout Pope provides succinct biographies of notable scholars associated with Ward; these include the astronomer Lawrence Rooke (1619/20-1662), whom Ward taught whilst at Cambridge; and polymath Isaac Barrow (1630-1677), who held the Cambridge chairs of Greek, Geometry and Mathematics in the wake of the Restoration before passing each on to noteworthy successors - the latter to Isaac Newton.