Isaac Newton Principia Mathematica (1st ed., continental issue)

A question about orbits

In January 1684 Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke argued about planetary motion. Hooke claimed he could derive the laws behind it but produced nothing, and Halley, who could not derive them himself, resolved to ask Isaac Newton. When he visited Newton in Cambridge, probably in August 1684, Newton told him he had already worked the problem out but could not find his papers.

In November 1684 Newton sent Halley a nine-page manuscript, De motu corporum in gyrum, on the motion of bodies in orbit. Halley was so struck that he went back to Cambridge to urge Newton to give the Royal Society more. What followed was a period of intense work lasting at least until mid-1686; Newton's chemical notebooks, normally kept with dated entries, have none at all from May 1684 to April 1686.

The result was the Principia: three books setting out the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, showing that a planet under an inverse-square force moves in an ellipse, and applying the same law to the satellites of Jupiter, to comets and to the tides. Its unifying claim, in the words of one modern historian, was 'unifying the terrestrial and celestial worlds under a single law.'

Newton, and the man who paid

Newton was born on Christmas Day 1642 by the calendar then used in England (January 4, 1643, by the modern one) at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, three months after his father's death. After his Cambridge degree in 1665 the university closed for the Great Plague, and at home he developed early calculus, optics and the beginnings of his theory of gravitation. He became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669, at 26, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1672.

Book 1 reached the Royal Society at the end of April 1686. Hooke pressed a claim of priority, and Newton, who hated disputes, threatened to suppress Book 3; Halley talked him out of it. Samuel Pepys, as the society's president, licensed the book that summer. The society had just spent its book budget on Willughby and Ray's History of Fishes, so Halley paid for the printing himself, and was later paid part of his own salary in leftover copies of the fish book.

Halley recorded the end of printing in a letter to Newton dated July 5, 1687. That month he presented a copy to King James II, the society's patron, writing that 'if ever Book was worthy the favourable acceptance of a Prince,' this was it. Newton went on to become Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint, president of the Royal Society from 1703, and was knighted in 1705. He died on March 20, 1727 (March 31 by the modern calendar), aged 84, and was the first scientist buried in Westminster Abbey.

Two title pages

The 1687 edition exists in two issues that differ only in the title page. One, with a two-line imprint naming no bookseller, was distributed in Britain by Newton and Halley through a number of booksellers. The other carries a cancel title page with the imprint spread over three lines and naming Samuel Smith, a London bookseller who also printed the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions and did most of his business on the Continent. That is the continental issue.

Catalogers do not agree on which came first. One describes the two as apparently concurrent; another notes the three-line issue is often called the second issue and that two-line copies seem to have been distributed first. All agree the continental issue is the scarcer: one 2020 catalog estimates that about a quarter of extant copies have Smith's imprint.

Beyond the title, the issues share the same text. Catalog descriptions of copies of both list a folding engraved plate of a cometary orbit, numerous woodcut diagrams, a cancel leaf P4 correcting the orientation of a diagram, and an errata leaf. The book was set by two compositors working at once, one on the first two books and one on the third, and the bibliographer William Todd identified stop-press corrections that cannot be tied to either issue.

How many survive

A census published in 1953 by Henry Macomber located 189 copies of the first edition. A new census by the Caltech historian Mordechai Feingold and his former student Andrej Svorenčík, published in 2020 after more than a decade of searching, found 386, including about 200 previously uncounted copies in 27 countries and 35 in Central Europe, a region the 1953 survey could barely reach behind the Iron Curtain.

How many were printed is still argued. Feingold and Svorenčík estimate some 600, and possibly as many as 750. Other recent bibliographical research, summarized in reference sources, concludes that Macomber's earlier estimate of about 500 is likely correct. By comparison, the second edition of 1713 was printed in 750 copies and the third, of 1726, in 1,250.

Famous copies are in institutions. Cambridge University Library holds Newton's own copy with handwritten notes for the second edition; the Huntington Library in California holds another annotated personal copy; the Bodmer Library in Switzerland has Leibniz's copy with his notes. Uppsala University Library's copy was stolen in the 1960s and returned in 2009, and the 2020 census turned up a copy at a bookseller in Italy that had been stolen from a German library.

At auction

The record copy is a continental issue bound in Restoration red goatskin with black decoration by Samuel Smith's own binder, using tools that once belonged to the royal binder Samuel Mearne, and bearing Smith's morocco label reading 'Ex dono Sam. Smith Bibliopol. Lond.' It was a presentation copy from the bookseller himself to an unidentified recipient. It later belonged to Major-General Sir George Burns, whose copy sold at auction in London on July 19, 1966, to the owner who consigned it fifty years later.

On December 14, 2016, at auction in New York, it brought $3,719,500 against an estimate of $1 million to $1.5 million. The sale was reported at the time as the most expensive printed scientific book ever sold at auction. Three years earlier, on December 6, 2013, the presentation copy to James II, an English-issue copy in a royal binding with his cypher, had sold in New York for $2,517,000.

Plainer copies sell for far less. A continental-issue copy in contemporary vellum, with Italian ownership going back to an early date, was offered at auction in July 2020 with an estimate of 280,000 to 350,000 pounds. On February 5, 2026, an unpressed continental-issue copy in contemporary vellum from the collection of the Williams College astronomer Jay M. Pasachoff, no. 286 in the 2020 census, sold in an online auction run from New York for $762,000 against a $400,000 to $600,000 estimate.

The numbers

First edition

1687, London; printing finished by July 5, 1687

Print run

Estimates differ: about 500 (Macomber) versus 600 to 750 (Feingold and Svorenčík)

Copies located

189 in the 1953 census; 386 in the 2020 census

Continental issue share

About a quarter of extant copies, per one 2020 catalog

Record copy size

237 by 186 mm, 252 leaves and a folding plate

Second edition

1713, 750 copies

Third edition

1726, 1,250 copies

Timeline

1. Dec 25, 1642

   Isaac Newton is born at Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire (January 4, 1643, by the modern calendar).

2. 1665

   Newton takes his Cambridge degree; the university closes for the plague and his most productive years begin.

3. 1669

   Newton becomes Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at 26.

4. Jan 1684

   Halley, Wren and Hooke debate planetary motion; Halley resolves to ask Newton.

5. Nov 1684

   Newton sends Halley the nine-page manuscript De motu corporum in gyrum.

6. Apr 1686

   Book 1 of the Principia is presented to the Royal Society; Hooke presses a priority claim.

7. 1686

   Samuel Pepys, as Royal Society president, licenses the book; Halley takes on the printing cost.

8. Jul 5, 1687

   Halley writes to Newton that printing is finished.

9. Jul 1687

   Halley presents a copy to King James II, the Royal Society's patron.

10. 1713

    The second edition is published, printed in 750 copies.

11. 1726

    The third edition is published, printed in 1,250 copies.

12. Mar 20, 1727

    Newton dies in London, aged 84.

13. 1953

    Henry Macomber's census locates 189 copies of the first edition.

14. Jul 19, 1966

    The future record copy, from the collection of Sir George Burns, sells at auction in London.

15. 1988

    Jay M. Pasachoff acquires the continental-issue copy sold in 2026.

16. Dec 6, 2013

    The James II presentation copy, English issue, sells at auction in New York for $2,517,000.

17. Dec 14, 2016

    A continental-issue copy in Samuel Smith's presentation binding sells at auction in New York for $3,719,500.

18. Jul 2020

    A continental-issue copy with early Italian ownership is offered at auction, estimated at 280,000 to 350,000 pounds.

19. Nov 10, 2020

    Caltech announces the Feingold-Svorenčík census: 386 copies located.

20. Feb 5, 2026

    The Pasachoff continental-issue copy sells in an online auction run from New York for $762,000.

The world in 1687

• Feb 12, 1687

  James VII issues a Declaration of Indulgence in Scotland, easing penalties on those who do not conform to the Church.

• Mar 19, 1687

  The explorer La Salle is murdered by his own men near present-day Navasota, Texas, while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi.

• Apr 4, 1687

  James II issues the Declaration of Indulgence in England, suspending laws against Catholics and nonconformists.

• Jul 2, 1687

  James II dissolves the English Parliament.

• Aug 12, 1687

  Habsburg forces defeat the Ottomans at the Battle of Mohacs.

• Sep 26, 1687

  A Venetian mortar shell ignites Ottoman gunpowder stored in the Parthenon, destroying half of it.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Isaac Newton Principia Mathematica (1st ed., continental issue) is number 23 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (31 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Royal Society could not pay for the Principia because it had just spent its book budget on a history of fishes, so Halley paid himself.
• Halley was later paid part of his promised salary in unsold copies of that fish book.
• Newton's chemistry notebooks show no entries at all from May 1684 to April 1686, while he was writing the Principia.
• Newton threatened to suppress the third book entirely over Robert Hooke's priority claim; Halley talked him out of it.
• The 2020 census more than doubled the number of known first editions, finding 35 copies in Central Europe alone.
• Uppsala University's first edition was stolen in the 1960s and came back in 2009.