Rare Antiquarian 19th century Astronomy Book. Celestial Objects For Common Telescopes, Thomas Webb, 3rd edition.

Today we have a fantastic and rare 3rd edition of Webb’s Celestial Objects For Common Telescopes, 1873. First published in 1859, the third edition added the British Association Catalogue to Webb’s Authorities, and expanded the list of numbered objects to 490.

Despite its well-loved condition, this price reflects the rarity of early editions; a first edition sold for £2,200, and 19th century editions remain highly collectible. 

What is even more intriguing is that this book was clearly loved and cherished by a previous owner who was also keenly interested in astronomy. Within its pages, 22 newspaper clippings can be found largely dating from the 1950s to 1960s, following worldwide interest in the Space Race as well as astronomy news in Australia. A fantastic insight into 19th century astronomy as well as 20th century concerns of “Life on Mars”. Its original lunar map is also contained within.

Price marked at $600 AUD.

Book information: 3rd ed., 1873, Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, London. Hardcover binding. Spine heavily worn, wear to pages, foxing and spots as pictured. Lunar map is worn and best kept as-is or carefully preserved. 

A quick biography of The Reverend Thomas William Webb (1807-1885) as follows: He spent much of his career as the Curate and Vicar of Hardwick in Herefordshire. A devoted servant of his parish, he was also a member of the Royal Astronomical Society and "considered an expert in optics and other fields of science, and took a keen interest in the flora and fauna of his native Hereford" (Moore, "The rev. Thomas William Webb", Journal of the British Astronomical Association, vol. 85, pp. 426-429). Webb's interest in astronomy dated to around 1825, and blossomed once he was appointed to Hardwick, where he acquired progressively larger reflectors and refractors to make a series of significant observations over the next thirty years. 

Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes was written to fill the need for a concise guide for amateurs, after Admiral William Henry Smyth's Cycle of Celestial Objects (1844) had become outdated and gone out of print. "It is indeed not wholly correct to speak of Webb's "Celestial Objects" as an abridgement of Smyth's older, larger, and more expensive volume. It was this; but it was also a good deal more, for whilst it offered to the possessors of small telescopes convenient lists of objects deserving of their attention, it also supplied an enormous amount of original information connected with the sun, moon, and planets, and the use of telescopes. This information... represented the personal experience of an intensely industrious and persevering man working under great difficulties through lack of instrumental means" (Chambers, "The Rev. T. W. Webb", Nature, vol. 32, no. 130, 1885).