Manuscript first draft from 1844 of the humorous book of illustrations that would become Roget’s 1850 publication with Ackermann that visualises mathematical terms or, as he describes it in the published title: Familiar Illustrations of the Language of Mathematics. Son of the philologist Peter Mark Roget, John Lewis would go on to edit his father’s thesaurus, write a history of the Water Colour Society but in his teens he created this volume of lively ink and watercolour designs which emerged in enlarged form into print 6 years later after a stint at Trinity College, Cambridge. The manuscript contains 41 vignettes, many of which contain the germ of the idea that would appear in printed form. ‘A Difference’ has an angry couple facing off in both versions; ‘Extracting a root’ is a grisly 19th century dental scene and ‘A table of common Logs: with Chracteristic One’ has... a young dandy leaning back against a wooden table made of logs! Roget’s manuscript vignettes are coloured whereas the printed version is based upon his line drawings. Altogether a charming piece of book making. Provenance: Bought by a member of the trade from a descendant of the Roget family in Deal, Kent.
DESCRIPTION: Small quarto notebook bound in buff paper-covered boards with a decorative printed panel pasted to the upper cover and the motto ‘Latin’ with ‘John Lewis Roget 1844’ written in the blank spaces. Roget has further asserted his ownership on the front pastedown: ‘John Lewis Roget. September 1844 Interlaken. Canton de Berne en Suisse’ - the Roget family had roots in Switzerland. In fact the Latin promised on the cover is not in evidence and the book offers an autograph title in ink, half-title 'Mathematics' and 41 humorous visualisations of mathematical terms (each c. 95 x 80mm.) and captioned in ink beneath with a tail-piece in pen and ink and watercolour, occasional spotting or light staining, all mounted and initialled ‘JLR’. Among the most pleasing of the images are: ‘An Imaginary Quantity’ features some rather beautiful flying machines and ‘Finding a Volume’ which has a man standing on a table looking at a wall of books - neither appear in the printed version. However Roget’s manuscript version of ‘An Area’ develops into the much more ambitious ‘Conservation of Areas’ in the printed version - a police officer looks over an iron railing at a pretty girl sweeping the steps. The ‘Catenary curves’ are illustrated by fighting cats on a roof top and ‘pi divided by two’ - well you get the idea. Accompanying the manuscript is a worn copy of the 1859 edition that pairs Roget’s methematical drawings with his Cambridge sketchbook - he had attended Trinity College, Cambridge, in the intervening years.
John Lewis Roget (1828-1908), watercolourist, historian of the British School of watercolours, and son of Peter Mark Roget, creator of Roget's Thesaurus.
