1837, A TREATISE ON OPTICS, by DAVID BREWSTER, JONAS ALTAMONT PHILLIPS BOOKPLATE For Sale

A Treatise on Optics
by Sir David Brewster, LL.D., F.R.S.L.&E.
A New Edition
With an Appendix, Containing an Elementary View of the Application of Analysis to Reflexion and Refraction
by A. D. Bache, A.M.
Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, & Blanchard
1837
12mo, 323, 95 pages, publisher\'s original cloth covered boards with paper spine label. Illustrated throughout in black and white. Some discoloration to cloth, chip to top of spine, front hinge cracked through and hanging on by a thread, foxing and discoloration throughout, else in good + condition.
Provenance: From the library of Jonas Altamont Phillips (1806–1862), prominent Philadelphia lawyer, civic figure, and member of the influential Jewish Phillips family, long associated with Congregation Mikveh Israel. Phillips was an active participant in Philadelphia political life—twice a Democratic candidate for mayor (1847–48)—and was held in such professional esteem that President James Buchanan offered him a federal judgeship, which he declined. His engraved bookplate appears on the front pastedown, later neatly crossed through by the book’s next documented owner, Dr. George M. Stiles, who inscribed the volume: “Dr. Geo. M. Stiles / October 29th, 1864 / Penna. University.” Stiles was then a University of Pennsylvania–trained physician during the Civil War, later serving as a staff surgeon in a Pennsylvania regiment under Governor Andrew Curtin, and subsequently becoming a respected physician in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. He went on to serve as president of the Montgomery County Medical Society and was active in broader scientific circles, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This layered provenance, linking an important early Jewish-American civic leader with a Civil War–era Pennsylvania physician and scientist, provides an unusually rich ownership history.

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