[HARRINGTON, James.]

The commonwealth of Oceana.

London, printed for D. Pakeman, 1656. Small folio (275 x 180 mm), pp. [xii], 1–239, [1, blank], 255–286, 189–210, [1], [1, blank]; title printed in red and black; light browning, faint damp-stain in a few leaves, but a good, honest copy in contemporary sheep, corners and joints a little rubbed, upper joint split at foot; the spine seems originally to have been plain and to have had gilt decoration and a label (this now lacking) added in the eighteenth century (before the late seventeenth century spines were often left plain but it was not uncommon for eighteenth-century collectors to have the spines of earlier books tooled and lettered for display and ease of identification: see Middleton, History of English craft bookbinding pp. 181–2). First edition. There are two variants, one having the imprint ‘printed by J. Streater for Livewell Chapman’, the second (as here) ‘printed for D. Pakeman’, the result of political interference during the printing of the book. The ‘Epistle to the reader’ says that the copy was ‘dispersed into three presses’ and the errata list notes that a ‘spanell questing hath sprung my book of one presse into two other’ (this is readily apparent from the three distinct typographical sequences that characterise the book: one printer produced quires [-]–Ii, the second quires Kk–Nn, the third Pp–Rr). As Streater and Chapman were radicals opposed to the Cromwellian protectorate, it is likely that it was Oceana’s printer and publisher, rather than its author, that prompted the government’s attentions, and that this is why distribution was at some point entrusted to Daniel Pakeman, a non-controversial publisher mainly of law books. ‘But Oceana is one of those works that transcend their immediate context. The book’s historical significance is that it marks a moment of paradigmatic breakthrough, a major revision of English political theory and history in the light of concepts drawn from civic humanism and Machiavellian republicanism’ (Pocock, Machiavellian moment p. 384).‘With the appearance in 1656 of Harrington’s Oceana, we encounter a major thinker . . . . At one level [it] can be understood as an attempt to come to terms with the brutal abolition of the old order and with the new facts of power. The work was also a response to Oliver Cromwell’s seizure of power in 1653. It is likely that Harrington was in touch with the “commonwealthmen” – a group of parliamentary and army leaders who wished to restore the republic Cromwell had destroyed. Even so, Oceana was ostensibly loyal to the Protector, whom it invited to fill the role of republican lawgiver’ (Worden, ‘English republicanism’, in Burns, ed., CHPT p. 450). Although Harrington’s political hopes were to be disappointed, Oceana ‘is of the greatest importance: in general terms as showing how it was possible to rethink the entire institutions of an extensive nation-state along republican lines, and to write a detailed consitution for it; and in relation to the Roman Republic as being by far the most detailed – if sometimes erratic – use of its institutions (far more detailed than by Machiavelli) to construct a feasible model for the present’ (Millar, Roman republic in political thought pp. 95–6).Oceana ‘was presented as a fictitious history of the foundation of the commonwealth of Oceana, with lengthy orations, pseudonyms (mostly classical and/or facetious) for places, persons, offices, and institutions, and an elaborate humanist apparatus of citations from authorities, especially regarding Venice, which in many ways served Harrington as a model, notably for the complicated system of balloting to which he was addicted. The fictional format in no way implied that Harrington’s proposals were not intended seriously or that he thought of himself as writing some kind of speculative utopia: on the contrary his analysis of the basis of “empire” (government) in general provided in his view the only grounds on which any proposal for a permanent settlement for England, and indeed Scotland and Ireland, might be sustained . . . . [In] the eighteenth century Harrington became one of the principal authorities in England and especially in America for Commonwealthsmen [and] was especially valued for the intimate link he had asserted between liberty and civic virtue, and conversely between corruption and arbitrary government . . . . More dramatically, perhaps, Harrington was clearly being read by radical lawyers during the French Revolution, and the French constitution of 1799 (at least until it was subverted by Napoleon) was clearly modelled on parts of the Oceana’ (Oxford DNB; for Harrington’s utopianism, see Davis, Utopia and the ideal society pp. 205–40).Gibson 704; Wing H809A. Pforzheimer 449 gives a detailed collation. See also Feather, ‘The publication of James Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana’, The Library, 1977, and ‘Oceana: the circumstances of publication’ in Pocock, ed., Political works of James Harrington pp. 6–14. Besides the two 1656 variants, there is a third, with Pakeman’s imprint dated 1658: Feather and ESTC correctly identify the three as variants, or issues, of a single edition, differing only in their title-pages, not as three separate editions. The few textual variations were probably introduced while the book was in press (see e.g. Pocock’s edition, pp. 185–7 nn.).

• GBP 4,250.00 > Andere Währungen
• Bestellnummer: T2374

• Antiquariat: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)