In August of 2024, just in time to share the book with Carol Neel’s First Year Foundations class “The Animal-Human Boundary” (also known informally, by us at least, as “beasts and monsters”), Special Collections purchased a 1678 book on unicorns:
Bartholin, Thomas (1616-1680). De Unicornu Observationes Novae. Amsterdam: H. Wetstenius, 1678.
This is the first illustrated edition (a version without pictures was published in 1645), so even if, like most people in 1678 (and today), you don’t read Latin, you can still enjoy this book. We thank the seller, Paul M. Dowling of Liber Antiqus, for providing these images.
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The Edward Worth Library in Dublin, Ireland, provides a useful overview of unicorn theory here, and Google Books has digitized versions both the 1645 and 1678 editions.
