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. The Mondrian of mathematics First edition of "one of the oddest and most beautiful books of the whole century" (McLean). The use of colour is its most iconic feature, with equal angles, lines, or polygonal regions assigned one of the three primary colours. It is rare in both the original wrappers (as here) and in the original cloth. 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. Exhibited at the Great Exhibition in London 1851, the book was praised for the beauty and artistry of the printing. However, the selling price of 25 shillings was almost five times the typical price for a Euclidean textbook of the time, placing it out of the reach of educators who were supposed to make use of this new way of teaching geometry. The technical difficulty of keeping the coloured shapes in register greatly increased production costs, and it was consequently never a viable book for cheap mass-production, effectively preventing Byrne's method from becoming widespread or effecting any major change in the teaching of geometry. Even so, its beauty and innovation ensure it remains among the most desirable of illustrated books from the Victorian period. Quarto (240 x 192 mm). Original buff wrappers, printed paper label on front cover, untrimmed. Housed in a custom red, yellow, and blue geometric solander box. Title page vignette and numerous geometric diagrams printed in colour within text, engraved headpieces, floriated initials. Wrappers soiled, spine creased and cracked resulting in loss at ends, evidence of printed paper label missing from head of spine, front joint split but holding, contents generally bright, some light foxing as usual, sporadic damp staining to lower margins, a handful of neat later pencil annotations demonstrating close reading: a notably well-preserved copy in the fragile original wrappers. Friedman, Color Printing in England 43; Keynes, Pickering, pp. 37 & 65; McLean, Victorian Book Design, p. 70. Susan M. Hawes & Sid Kolpas, "Oliver Byrne: The Matisse of Mathematics", Convergence (Mathematical Association of America), Aug. 2015, available online.