A HUGE POPULAR ASTRONOMY BOOK FROM THE VICTORIAN ERA
OLD AND NEW ASTRONOMY
By Richard A. Proctor
1895 London Edition in a gilt decorated binding;
Includes photographs of nebulae by E.E. Barnard and Isaac Roberts
31 Full Page Plates and 472 figures in text. VG+ condition.
Description: Richard A. Proctor, completed by A. Cowper Ranyard OLD AND NEW ASTRONOMY (new edition). London: Longmans, Green, and Co.., 1895, 8.5 x 11.5 in.,816 pp. 31 full page plates and 472 illustrations.
Condition: Hardbound in blue cloth with ornate gilt designs on cover and spine; top pages gilt. Book has been expertly rebound with new endpapers and original cloth reused (see photos). Minor wear to corners. Interior pages show occasional handling smudges but are otherwise very clean, tightly bound, and unmarked with some of the original tissue guard present. Overall a very handsome volume, rather hard to find these days.
Information: A lovely popular book, the magnum opus of a noted British science writer of the 1800's, giving a review of the astronomical knowledge of the times. Chapter titles include: Introduction; Ancient and modern methods of Observing the Heavenly Bodies; Ancient and Modern Studies of the Earth's Shape; Apparent Motions of the Sun, Moon, and Planets; The True Mechanism of the Solar System; Measuring and Weighing the Solar System; The Sun; The Sun's Surroundings; The Inferior Planets; The Planet Earth; The Moon as a Planet; The Planet Mars; The Zone of Asteroids; The Planet Jupiter; The Planet Saturn; The Planet Uranus; The Planet Neptune; The Stars; Table of Astronomical Constants; Index.
Biographical Note: Richard Anthony Proctor (1837 - 1888), a British astronomer, was born at Chelsea. He is best remembered his many popular science books, particularly those on astronomy. His first book Saturn and his System was published 1865, at his own expense. This work contains an elaborate account of the phenomena presented by the planet; but although favorably received by astronomers, it had no great sale. He intended to follow it up with similar treatises on Mars, Jupiter, Sun, Moon, comets and meteors, stars, and nebulae, and had in fact commenced a monograph on Mars, when the failure of a New Zealand bank deprived him of an independence which would have enabled him to carry out his scheme without anxiety as to its commercial success or failure. Being thus obliged to depend upon his writings for the support of his family, and having learned that the general public are not attracted by works requiring arduous study, he cultivated a more popular style, but he did turn out some important books on the Sun and the Moon. He wrote for a number of periodicals; and although he has stated that he would at this time willingly have turned to stone-breaking on the roads, or any other form of hard and honest but unscientific labor, if a modest competence had been offered him in any such direction, he attained a high degree of popularity, and his numerous works had a wide influence in familiarizing the public with the main facts of astronomy, solar system, planetary astronomy, Victorian science, astrophysics, etc..
Among his many books are : Light Science for Leisure Hours and The Sun (1871); The Orbs around Us and Essays on Astronomy (1872); The Expanse of Heaven, The Moon and The Borderland of Science (1873); The Universe and the Coming Transits and Transits of Venus (1874); Our Place among Infinities (1875); Myths and Marvels of Astronomy (1877); The Universe of Stars (1878); Flowers of the Sky (1879); The Poetry of Astronomy (1880); Easy Star Lessons and Familiar Science Studies (1882); Mysteries of Time and Space and The Great Pyramid (1883); The Universe of Suns (1884); The Seasons (1885); Other Suns than Ours and Half-Hours with the Stars (1887).
Elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1866, he became honorary secretary in 1872, and contributed eighty-three separate papers to its Monthly Notices. Of these the more noteworthy dealt with the distribution of stars, star clusters and nebulae, and the construction of the sidereal universe. He was an expert in all that related to map-drawing, and published two star-atlases. A chart on an isographic projection, exhibiting all the stars contained in the Bonner Durchmusterung, was designed to show the laws according to which the stars down to the 9-10th magnitude are distributed over the northern heavens. His largest and most ambitious work, Old and New Astronomy, unfortunately left unfinished at his death, was completed by A. Cowper Ranyard and published in 1892. He settled in America some time after his second marriage in 1881, and died of yellow fever at New York on the 12th of September 1888. A monument was later erected in his memory. His daughter Mary Proctor, by his first marriage, would also become an astronomer and a successful lecturer and writer.
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