The Works of Jacob Behmen, The Teutonic Theosopher …

First Complete Collected Edition in English, with volume 4 in the preferred second state containing a second version of The Way To Christ and three further pieces. Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) was a 17th-century shoemaker whose radical and mystical theology has been an enduring influence to the present day, on thinkers as diverse as Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Hartmann, Bergson and Heidegger, Whitehead's process theology, and Jung and Albert Schweitzer. William Law (1686–1761) was the principal English Behmenist, "an important conduit through which a particular stream of 17th-century devotion was transmitted to the later 18th century and beyond" (ODNB). He first came across Boehme in the 17th-century translations by John Sparrow and John Ellistone. Although he taught himself German in order to read Boehme in the original and considered undertaking a new translation, it was left to his London friends, Thomas Langcake, a clerk in the Bank of England, to whom Law became much attached, and George Ward, who between them acted as his literary agents, to bring out this modernized edition of Boehme based on the old translations after Law’s death.

4 volumes, 4to (284 × 217 mm). Lately rebound in panelled calf to style, red morocco labels. With portrait & 25 plates (3 folding, 2 hand-coloured, 4 with overslips). Union League of Philadelphia inkstamps to backs of plates in first 2 vols., vol. 4 half-title reinforced at two margins, same vol. lightly trimmed preserving some uncut edges, general even toning, sporadic foxing, still a good copy with all plates and parts present.