The arrival of the Kepler books

A huge box loaded down with packing materials and sent from Germany has arrived this morning. It contains 11 volumes from Kepler's Collected Works - the GW collected edited by Max Casper. This is perhaps the most exciting book purchase I have ever made!

So I now own volumes 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, and 20.1. All his major works, plus three of the five volumes of letters. Some of the books are uncut. Some are hardback, some paperback. A couple have hard cardboard outers. All in all, they are probably the nicest set of books I own.

Flicking through them, and a couple of attempts at some Latin translation, mainly using one of the translation programmes I have acquired. As expected, this suggests that translation will be long drawn out process. Still I have perhaps two years of Latin study before I would expect to be able to really get to grips with it. By contrast, Linda had little trouble reading out the gothic-scripted German letters and telling me what they were about (at least to some degree)

Few things are more exciting that £600 worth of books!


The frontpiece of Astronomia Nova - volume 3 of my set - note that Mars is considered to be a star!