Search Results: Titles starting with B from Mobilis Books

The Birthday Oracle, or Whom Shall I Marry: Guess at the Character or Appearance of Your Future Husband or Wife. Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1883.
(105 x 85 mm) pp. 248, [8]. Machline binding with photo of Old Aberdeen Cathedral. Leather spine with gilt panels. Floral endpapers and decorative edges. Full gilt foredges. Ornamental border printed on all pages. Names written adjacent to birthdays, with dates ranging from 1880s to 1950s (several dates pre-date book's publication indicating birth year of person rather than date inscribed). Includes handwritten index of names (19th c.).
This Mauchline-wear binding relic of the Victorian era shows continued usage from the 1880s to the 1950s— following the hopes of several (possibly related?) families through height of the Spiritualist movement, through the First and Second World Wars into Britain's Post-War period. The Birthday Oracle falls into the Victorian middle class fervour for accessing knowledge from beyond the veil. Though true Spiritualists… Read More

FARNOL, Jeffery. The Broad Highway. Illustrated by C. E. Brock. Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. 1912.
(230 x 170) pp. 493. Bound in blue cloth with gilt foliage motifs and color portrait. p. 205 ripped in margin; illustration for page 30 loose but present.

In the 9th century, the Persian scholar Al-Farghani wrote his Elements of Astronomy on the Celestian Motions (or, Astronomia differentia, also titled Alfragani Elementa Astronomica, because of the lack of authority titles in the pre-Modern period). In part a summary of Ptolomy's Greek Almagest, and in part a scientific tour de force in its own right, the Elements of Astronomy presented a (correct) calculation of the circumference of the earth and the tilt of the Earth's axis. In the 12th century, this Arabic text was translated into Latin, first by John of Seville, then by Gerard of Cremona. The Latin text puts to bed the tired fallacy that particularly Medieval peoples believed the Earth was flat. On this leaf the last line reads: Dicamusque cum puncto sphere terre esset punctus sphere celi necesse fuit ut superficies circuli equinoctii diei divideret superam terre… [And let us say that when the point of the sphere of the earth be the point of the sphere of the sky, it is necessary that the surface… Read More