Flamsteed, John (1646-1719).

first edition, folio (545 x 405mm.), [4], 9, [1]pp., maps numbered in manuscript with manuscript listing on front fly leaf, original letterpress index slip pasted on inside cover, illustration: engraved portrait frontispiece by G. Vertue after T. Gibson, engraved title vignette and head-piece by L. du Guernier after I.B. Catenaro, engraved initial and tail-piece to text, 27 double-page engraved celestial charts by James Mynde and Abraham Sharp, including the celestial hemispheres, binding: contemporary half calf, uncut, some light marginal soiling, binding rubbed

Shirley, British Library C.FLAM-1a

When the Greenwich observatory was set up in 1675 Flamsteed was put in charge as England’s first Astronomer Royal. This work was posthumously completed by Flamsteed’s widow, with the help of his two assistants James Hodgson and Joseph Crosthwait. The reason for this was his conflict with another scientist, Isaac Newton, the President of the Royal Society at the time. Flamsteed refused to publish work that had been commissioned by the king, and in 1712 Newton and Edmond Halley published a preliminary version of Flamsteed's Historia coelestis Britannica without crediting the author. Flamsteed denounced it and destroyed as many copies as he could. By the time the celestial atlas designed to accompany the Historia appeared in 1729 Flamsteed had been dead for ten years.