Leviathan | 1651, first edition, first issue. The “Sea Wolf” copy
irst edition, first issue of Leviathan, one of the foundational works of Western political philosophy, from the library of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, the celebrated naval commander known to Napoleon as “Le Loup des Mers”, the Sea Wolf.
London: Printed for Andrew Crooke, 1651.
Folio. Engraved allegorical frontispiece; printed title page with the characteristic winged-head ornament identifying the first issue; folding letterpress table. Contemporary seventeenth-century calf, covers ruled in blind, sympathetically rebacked with red morocco lettering-piece and gilt compartments, edges sprinkled red. Rear free endpaper replaced. Housed in a brown cloth slipcase.
With the bookplate of Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald.
Published in the aftermath of the English Civil War, Leviathan was Hobbes’s masterpiece and one of the defining books in the history of political thought. At its centre is a profoundly unsettling question: what authority must individuals surrender in order to escape violence, disorder and civil collapse?
Hobbes imagined mankind without government as existing in a “state of nature”, in which competing individual interests ultimately produce insecurity and conflict. His solution was the social contract: individuals collectively surrender a portion of their natural liberty and create an artificial sovereign power capable of maintaining peace. For Hobbes, even severe government was preferable to the return of anarchy and civil war.
The celebrated engraved frontispiece gives physical form to the argument. A gigantic crowned sovereign rises above the landscape, his body composed from hundreds of individual subjects, while beneath him are arranged the instruments of civil and ecclesiastical authority. Few title images in the history of printing have so completely encapsulated the argument of the book they introduce.
The present copy is the first issue of the first edition, distinguished by the woodcut ornament of a winged head within a frame of scrolls and tassels on the printed title page. Later issues employ different ornaments and incorporate corrections to the errata. The first issue was printed while Hobbes was living in Paris, receiving sheets from London for correction as the work progressed. Its publication immediately provoked controversy, and Leviathan subsequently became one of the most debated political books of the seventeenth century.
The provenance is exceptional.
Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald (1775–1860), was one of the most extraordinary naval and political figures of the nineteenth century. His remarkable success against French shipping during the Napoleonic Wars earned him the nickname “Le Loup des Mers”, the Sea Wolf, reputedly bestowed by Napoleon himself. While commanding HMS Speedy, he captured or destroyed dozens of enemy vessels, establishing a reputation for audacity which later helped inspire fictional naval heroes including C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey.
Yet Cochrane was as troublesome politically as he was formidable at sea. Elected to Parliament, he became an outspoken radical and persistent critic of naval corruption and the British establishment. Following his controversial conviction in the Stock Exchange fraud of 1814, he was expelled from the Royal Navy and Parliament, before taking his naval expertise abroad.
He subsequently commanded the revolutionary navies of Chile and Brazil during their struggles for independence and later served the Greek cause. Pardoned by the British Crown in 1832, he was restored to the Royal Navy and eventually rose to Admiral of the Red.
Cochrane’s ownership of Leviathan creates an unusually compelling association. Hobbes’s book is fundamentally concerned with sovereignty, obedience, political legitimacy and the dangers of rebellion; Cochrane’s life was spent repeatedly testing precisely those boundaries. A British naval officer who became a radical parliamentarian, was cast out by the establishment, commanded revolutionary navies against established governments and was ultimately reconciled with the Crown is an exceptionally resonant early owner for Hobbes’s great examination of the relationship between the individual and the state.
The volume also retains evidence of early engagement with the text. Ink corrections occur on sixteen pages, alongside the marks of ownership and use expected of a serious seventeenth-century book. These have been left undisturbed and form part of the copy’s history.
Condition: contemporary calf, sympathetically rebacked, with some expected wear to the covers; neat repairs to the inner hinges and to a short closed tear at the head of the front free endpaper. Rear free endpaper renewed. Internally with light browning and some peripheral staining, but overall notably crisp and brighter than many surviving copies. Folding table present.
A compelling first edition, first issue of one of the great books of political philosophy, made exceptional by its provenance from Admiral Thomas Cochrane, the radical parliamentarian, revolutionary naval commander and legendary “Sea Wolf”.
The association is difficult to improve upon: Hobbes’s great argument for sovereign authority, owned by a man whose extraordinary life was defined by challenging it.
Macdonald & Hargreaves 42; Pforzheimer 491; Printing and the Mind of Man 138; Wing H2246.
