'masterly'

Second edition and an attractively bound set of this significant astronomical work.

The Reverend Samuel Vince (1749-1821) was an accomplished mathematician and astronomer who earned the Royal Society's Copley Medal for a paper on motion in 1780, and six years later was elected a Fellow. Between 1796 and 1811 he served as Plumian professor of astronomy and experimental philosophy at Cambridge.

Vince's 'masterly and best-known work, A Complete System of Astronomy (3 vols., 1797–1808), appeared in a second enlarged edition in 1814–23. Professor John Playfair asserted in the Edinburgh Review of June 1809 that the tables collected in the third volume marked "a great epoch in astronomical science"' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

Second edition; 3 volumes, 4to (27 x 21 cm); 19 plates in volume I, 431 separately-paginated pages of tables and addenda in volume III, a small number of pencilled notes and drawings but overall contents clean; recently rebound to style in divinity style calf, bevelled edges, red and green morocco labels, 5 raised bands, cross and clover tooling and panelling to spines and boards in black, marbled endpapers and edges, spines and portions of boards faded, some scuffing and rubbing of the calf, a very good set; 571, 554, and 114pp.