Byrne, Six Books of Euclid

This title presents the elements of Euclid in living color. This is a rare and beautiful geometry primer from the 19th century. In 1847, Charles Whittingham of the Chiswick Press published an extraordinary edition on Euclidean geometry, authored by an obscure mathematician called Oliver Byrne. As Surveyor of Her Majesty's Settlements in the Falkland Islands, Byrne had already published mathematical and engineering works, but never anything like this. Written and designed by Byrne to simplify Euclid's propositions, this remarkable example of Victorian printing has been described as one of the oddest and most beautiful books of the 19th century. Each proposition is set in Caslon italic, with a four line initial: the rest of the page is a unique riot of red, yellow and blue: on some pages letters and numbers only are printed in color, sprinkled over the pages like tiny wild flowers, demanding the most meticulous register: elsewhere, solid squares, triangles and circles are printed in gaudy and theatrical colors, attaining a verve not seen again on the pages of a book until the era of Dufy, Matisse and Derain.