The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid in which coloured diagrams and symbols are used instead of letters for the greater ease of learners

London: William Pickering, 1847. First edition. Quarto. Original drab boards, dark green cloth backstrip, printed paper label on front cover, partly unopened. Geometric title page vignette and diagrams printed in red, yellow, and blue, engraved headpieces, ornamental initials by C. Whittingham of Chiswick, text printed in Caslon old-face type. Binding worn and bumped, spine ends a little chipped, 3 cm split to cloth along front joint, rear joint cracked but holding firm, contents heavily foxed as often.

The only edition of Byrne's stunning rendering of Euclidean geometry, it has been deemed "one of the oddest and most beautiful books of the (truncated) whole century" (McLean). Printed in primary colors using four-color printing, Byrne's choice of method was both practical and aesthetic. In addition to creating a beautiful text, "the stark use of primary colors was envisaged by Byrne as a teaching aid" in which "each page is a unique riot of red, yellow, and blue, attaining a verve not seen again on book pages till the days of Dufy, Matisse, and Derain" (McLean).

Byrne (1810-1880) was a self-educated Irish mathematician and engineer who “considered that it might be easier to learn geometry if colours were substituted for the letters usually used to designate the angles and lines of geometric figures. Instead of referring to, say, ‘angle ABC’, Byrne’s text substitued a blue or yellow or red section equivalent to similarly coloured sections in the theorem’s main diagram” (Friedman). His style prefigures the modernist experiments of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements.

Friedman, Color Printing in England 43; Keynes, Pickering, pp. 37, 65; McLean, Victorian Book Design, p. 70. (Inventory #: 6958)