The Elements of Algebra, in ten books. Volume the first [- the second]. To which are prefixed I. The Life and Character of the Author. II. His Palpable Arithmetic Decyphered,

Bookseller Notes

Important textbook by blind autodidact Nicholas Saunderson (1683-1739), who attended Cambridge as a tutor - despite having no formal qualifications - and who succeeded to the Lucasian chair. 'Saunderson's main significance is as an excellent and popular teacher in the years that mathematics began to emerge as the centre of a Cambridge education. He differed from his predecessors in the Lucasian chair both in his almost exclusive emphasis on the communication of mathematical ideas, and in his apparent lack of interest in theology. Philip Dormer Stanhope, later the fourth earl of Chesterfield, who was at Trinity Hall (171214) and attended Saunderson's lectures, described him as a professor who had not the use of his own eyes, but taught others to use theirs' (ODNB). Elements of Algebra was prepared 'during the last six years of his life, [and it] was published by subscription in 1740 by his widow and children with the help of John Colson, his successor as Lucasian professor. The treatise is a model of careful exposition and it was used as a text at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich' (ibid.). This copy with a contemporary mathematical note loosely inserted.