The Wonders of the Heavens by Sir Richard Phillips 1821

"The Wonders of the Heavens" by Sir Richard Phillips - 1821

Here is a copy of "The Wonders of the Heavens" by Sir Richard Phillips, that was published 1821. There are 14 nice folding star charts in this book along with lots of other illustrations. The frontispiece consists of a very nice folding chart of the Moon. This is the only time that I have seen this book come up for sale and there are no copies available on AbeBooks. The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada used to sell a T-shirt with with an image of the lunar phases engraving from this book printed on it (see RASC T-shirt).

When I acquired this book I posted images of the plates on the Vintage Astronomy Books Facebook group and Bob McNaught noticed that I did not have the two foot long plate of the relative sizes of the planets that his 1821 edition has. The total number of plates in my copy is 47 and his copy has 51 plates. At first we thought that my copy had lost some of its plates over the years but when I checked the section of my copy that describes the plates there was only 47 plates included with my copy. The same section of Bob's copy describes 51 plates. We then looked at the errata at the end of my book and Bob found that his copy has all of the corrections described in the errata of my copy. So it turns out that there were at least two editions published in 1821, but the author, who was also the publisher, did not indicate that they were different editions. My copy appears to be the earliest known version of the 1821 edition.