First substantial history of algebra, with early American provenance
John Wallis
WALLIS, John (1616-1703). A Treatise of Algebra, both Historical and practical. London: John Playford for Richard Davis, 1685

The first edition of Wallis’s series of tracts on Algebra, with early American provenance; “the first substantial history of the subject”(Stedall). A Puritan minister who ended up working as a codebreaker for the Parliamentary Army, Wallis was awarded a chair of Geometry after Royalist mathematicians were purged from Oxford. With this work “concentrating on English advances, Wallis was telling a story that had not been told before and has hardly been addressed since” (Stedall). His book is most famous for championing the work of Thomas Harriot, whom he claims was heavily plagiarized by Descartes. This copy is from the family library of James Alexander, one of the original members of the American Philosophical Society. Wing W-613. See Jacqueline Stedall, A Discourse Concerning Algebra: English Algebra to 1685.

Folio (312 x 194). Engraved frontispiece, 10 engraved folding plates, woodcut diagrams throughout (some toning and marginal dampstaining, pp. 5-6 bound out of order). Contemporary English calf, paper label on spine, title in ink on fore-edge (front board loose, joints showing, boards abraded with some loss of calf). Provenance: effaced ownership inscription on flyleaf – James Alexander (1691-1756; lawyer, surveyor, and statesman in colonial New York; signature on title and interior margin, by descent to his grandson:) – John Rutherfurd (1760-1840, New Jersey politician and surveyor; armorial bookplate labeled no. 20).